Hi, so I cleared 2023 prelims and IFoS cut off. A different perspective than the ones given above.
I joined a regional weekly test series for prelims in December 2022 and joined the first month SFG Level 2 to see what the hype was all about.
I actually ended up quitting SFG after a month as it wasn't my cup of tea. Had joined in online mode and staring at a screen everyday at 7 am in the morning was not my thing and coupled with weekly tests that I had, I got a burnout . So wouldn't really recommend it in the online mode.
But what one needs is a method to stay accountable, could be weekly or daily, SFG or no SFG. That will help you cover the syllabus and when your rank goes down you will study out of fear/guilt if not nothing else.
One month of SFG however did help me to gauge my preparation levels, and scores above 60 meant that I was in the game. What I would recommend is to try and stay in the top 10% of students in a fairly large sample size of 500 odd students (in an institute whose material you won't have read much). Rational is that your score might get inflated if you say read vision CA magazine and then solve their prelims test series. You won't be getting those many direct hits in the examination.
Another observation that I had in the weekly test series was when the second batch of tests began in January (ie. the mains given people started writing them) my ranks started to plummet. So the real competition would be people who have cleared prelims before/written mains.
