Mentor Grade & Tier Policy

• What you earn depends on your tier. Your tier depends on what you have proved and, over time, on how you deliver.
• You choose your rate from a set of steps within your tier's range, for each subject. SarthiLink approves it.
• Credentials decide where you start. Delivery decides where you go.
• We publish the factors and which way each one pushes. We do not publish the weights.
• You can always ask why, and you can always challenge the facts behind it.

1.1 How SarthiLink decides what a mentor earns for a session, how that changes over time, and how a mentor can question it.

1.2 It is part of the Mentor Terms and is enforced through them.

1.3 It says nothing about what a student pays. That is set separately and is not derived from any figure in this document by any arithmetic a mentor should perform.

2.1 What you bring — your examination record, your subject expertise, your teaching and evaluation experience, and your academic background. Established through the Mentor Verification Standard. This is what sets your starting point.

2.2 What you do here — how often students come back, how well sessions are rated, how useful students say they were, how much bookable time you offer, and how reliably you deliver.

2.3 The second counts more as it becomes trustworthy. A mentor with no sessions is judged entirely on what they brought. As real sessions accumulate, delivery counts for more — but only in proportion to how much evidence there actually is. A handful of sessions does not swing a tier.

2.4 Missing evidence is never treated as bad evidence. Where something cannot be measured yet, it is not scored against you; it simply does not count until it can be.

3.1 Every mentor sits in one tier: Emerging · Achiever · Expert · Elite · Distinguished.

Before your first claim is adjudicated you are Not Yet Graded. That is a stage, not a sixth tier: your earning is set at the Emerging range, and each subject becomes bookable as the claim behind it is adjudicated. You are not waiting on a grade — only on the subject you want to teach. A subject still under review does not hold back one that has been adjudicated.

3.1A If you joined SarthiLink before the new grading system. We have worked out a provisional starting tier from the information we already hold. It is internal. It is not your grade, it is never shown to you as a result, and it is never shown to anyone else. It exists only so that we can process the existing mentor base.

Nothing missing from the old system counts against you. Where we never asked you for something, its absence is not evidence.

When you next sign in you will be asked to check your information, correct anything out of date, add what the new system needs, and upload the supporting documents. We then compute your actual tier from the complete picture, and your profile goes live once that is done and the information has been verified. Until then your profile stays unpublished — not as a penalty, but because we do not publish a claim we have not checked.

3.2 Each tier makes a range of rates available. The ranges do not overlap, so moving up a tier is always worth something.

3.3 Elite requires a real record of delivery on SarthiLink, not credentials alone, and is not open yet; we will say so clearly before any mentor is placed in it. Distinguished, the highest tier, is reached in one of two ways: by the performance route — your evidence plus a real record of delivery on SarthiLink, which is not open yet either — or by the service route for retired senior civil servants, which is open now. The service route is for a person retired, by superannuation or voluntary retirement, from an All India Service or a Central Civil Service Group A service recruited through the Civil Services Examination, who held a post at Pay Level 14 or above; it is verified from the retirement or pension order and evidence of the last such posting.

3.4 Your tier, your range and your current rates are shown in your dashboard at all times, with the reasoning behind them.

4.1 Within your tier's range there are fixed steps. There is no rate between two steps.

4.2 You choose a step for each subject you teach. Different subjects may sit at different steps.

4.3 You choose a step; you do not name an amount.

4.4 SarthiLink approves your choice, or approves a different step within your range and tells you why. A different step takes effect only when you confirm it. The decision, your proposal and the reason are recorded.

4.5 A new subject starts at the bottom step of your range. You can ask for more.

4.6 Your 60-minute rate is the anchor. Your 45-minute and 30-minute rates start at exactly three-quarters and one half of it — nothing is rounded. Each duration's rate is approved on its own, all three for a subject are approved together, and we may approve a different shorter-session rate only from the same scale applied to another step in your range; 4.4 then applies.

5.1 Tiers are reviewed quarterly.

5.1A When we move you up or down. A tier move we make is recorded with its reasons and the evidence behind it, and we give you at least 14 days' written notice before it takes effect — for a promotion and a demotion alike. You can ask us to re-examine it under 7.5; an administrator re-examines the evidence and records the result and the reasons, and we aim to answer within 4–5 working days (a target only). Asking does not by itself stop a move taking effect, but the decision stays open to review. A move applies only to sessions booked after it takes effect; a session already booked keeps the earning recorded when it was booked. An urgent safety concern or a suspected fraud is dealt with under the Account Suspension Policy, never by a tier move.

5.2 Moving up a tier takes effect at the bottom step of the new range.

5.3 Moving down takes effect at the top step of the new range — the gentlest landing the rule allows.

5.4 Asking for a rate review. You may ask us to review your step at any time from your dashboard. You do not have to give a reason, though we may ask for one where it would help. Asking does not by itself entitle you to an increase. This is a review of your step within your current range: a disagreement with a fact behind your tier is handled under 7.5, and your tier itself is reviewed under 5.1.

5.5 How we decide it. We approve your request, decline it, or propose a different step within your range (4.4 applies). A step we propose instead stays open until you answer: you may accept it, decline it, or make one counter-proposal, to which our answer is yes or no. Until you accept, your current rate stays, and not answering is never acceptance. Any step we approve must be in your range as it stands on the day we decide. We aim to decide within 4–5 working days; that is a target only, and a request is never treated as approved because time has passed. You may have one request under review at a time, and if we decline you may ask again straight away.

5.6 A change never affects a booking already made. Every booking is delivered and paid at the amounts recorded when it was made, and a rescheduled session keeps the amounts recorded when it was first booked.

5.7 Being promoted or demoted does not change what you have already earned. When your tier changes, each subject's rate moves to the step 5.2 or 5.3 names, and we send you the new tier and rates to review before they apply (7.4). Your new rate and the date it takes effect are recorded and shown in your dashboard.

6.1 Reliability can hold you back. It never moves you up. Turning up is the minimum expected, not an achievement that earns a higher rate.

6.2 Repeated non-attendance, late joining, cancellations and upheld disputes limit how far you can rise, whatever your score.

6.3 Not being booked is never held against you. SarthiLink sets prices; a mentor nobody books may be one we priced wrongly.

6.4 Not offering slots is never treated as misconduct and raises no reliability flag. You stop appearing until you offer some again, and going quiet does not by itself move you down a tier. But how much bookable time you offer is one of the things we measure (§2.2), so over time it counts in the delivery half of your grade.

7.1 Transparency of scoring factors. SarthiLink publishes the material factors considered in mentor grading, including the examination-relevance category applicable to each recognised examination. The published information explains the nature and relative relevance of each factor in plain language, but does not disclose SarthiLink's numerical coefficients, weights, thresholds, normalisation methods or other internal calculation parameters. This policy and the Verification Standard together are that list.

7.1A The examinations we count. We count these examinations, and no others. Next to each is its relevance category (7.1):

• UPSC Civil Services (CSE): full relevance
• UPSC Indian Forest Service (IFoS): adjacent relevance
• State PCS: near relevance

Any other examination is not counted. You may write about it in your bio, which is in your own words and is not checked by us.

7.2 Confidentiality of numerical model parameters. The exact numerical coefficients, weights, thresholds, normalisation methods and interaction rules used by the grading engine are proprietary internal parameters and are not publicly disclosed.

7.3 Individual score explanation. Where a mentor asks for an explanation of their own grading outcome, SarthiLink identifies the material factors and the applicable relevance categories that contributed to it, and explains the resulting direction of the assessment in plain language — without disclosing numerical coefficients or the internal scoring formula. We say what was counted, what was not, and what would change it.

7.4 Your tier is computed, not chosen. Until our grading engine is running, a SarthiLink person computes your tier by hand from your adjudicated evidence, with the same grading matrix, and records the scores it was computed from — that is computing a tier, not choosing one. Only a confirmed tier takes effect, and a provisional placement is never shown to you or to students. Your rate step is yours to confirm: you select your step and we approve it — or we record the step we have agreed with you, and it takes effect only when you confirm it. If we approve a different step from the one you proposed, that step too takes effect only when you confirm it. You may also choose to be listed at a lower tier than your computed one (Mentor Terms clause 7.8). An administrator can review a result.

7.5 If you think the result is wrong, we re-examine the evidence behind it — we never simply adjust the outcome. Ask at support@sarthilink.com. We aim to answer a request for an explanation (7.3) or a re-examination within 4–5 working days — a target only.

7.6 If you think something counts for too little. If your case is that we give too little weight to something we already measure, that is not a ground for changing your tier: we record it as evidence for the next time we recalibrate the system. Apart from choosing a lower tier yourself (7.4) and the reliability limit (6.2), your tier is the one computed from your evidence.

8.1 The Founding Mentor badge is retired. It is no longer displayed on profiles, in the directory, or anywhere on the platform. A mentor's founding rank remains on their record and may be cited by them as a fact of their history with SarthiLink.

8.2 The reduced-commission benefit ends with the commission model. There is no commission under the current model, so there is nothing for a reduced rate to reduce. This is explained separately in the notice sent to every Founding Mentor, and nothing in this policy is intended to be the first place a Founding Mentor learns of it.

8.3 Founding Mentors are graded on the same basis as everyone else.

9.1 The subjects you may teach are fixed once your claims are adjudicated.

9.2 You can ask to add or remove one at any time, and we aim to decide within 4–5 working days — a target only. We approve it, decline it with reasons, or propose different terms — and if we propose different terms you may accept, decline, or come back once. Our answer to that is yes or no, and the process ends there. If it ends without agreement, your existing subjects and rates stay as they were.

10.1 We may change this policy on at least 14 days' notice. Changing this policy is separate from a review of your rate under 5.4–5.5. A change never applies retrospectively, and never to a booking already made. One notice of a change satisfies both this clause and the Mentor Terms (26.1): they are a single notice system, not two periods. The notice period never removes your right to leave under 10.2.

10.2 A Material Reduction in Mentor Earnings.

10.2.1 What qualifies. A Material Reduction in Mentor Earnings happens when a change we make to our policies, contractual terms, payment rules, deductions or the way earnings are calculated reduces what you would otherwise earn for a future session under the terms that applied before. Any reduction qualifies, whatever its percentage or amount — a lower rate, a new deduction, or a change to eligibility or to the calculation that lowers your effective earning.

10.2.2 Your right to leave. If you do not want to accept a qualifying change, you may end your engagement by telling us in writing before the change takes effect; your exit takes effect before the change does, without the 30-day notice in the Mentor Terms (24.1), and no exit penalty arises from that decision. You do not have to show that the reduction passes any minimum.

10.2.3 Your own rate review. A rate review you ask for under 5.4–5.5 is not, by itself, a Material Reduction in Mentor Earnings. Any revised rate still needs our approval, your acceptance where 5.5 requires it, and the ordinary review procedure.

10.2.4 Sessions already booked. A qualifying change never reduces the approved earning for a session already booked: that session keeps the terms and earning in force when it was booked, unless we both agree otherwise in writing or the law requires otherwise. Sessions already booked are delivered on those terms (Mentor Terms 24.4 and 26.2). Where we decide that a booked session will not be delivered after you leave, we apply our documented cancellation or replacement process, and no exit penalty applies merely because you used your right under 10.2.2.

10.2.5 What you have earned. Everything you have already earned remains payable under the Mentor Terms, subject only to legitimate reconciliation, adjustments the agreement already provides for, and deductions the law permits. Leaving under this clause never forfeits an earned amount (Mentor Terms 24.6).

10.2.6 No way around it. We will not avoid this clause by making an economically equivalent reduction through a change of name, eligibility criteria, deductions, payment conditions or calculation method.

Version 2.0 · Effective 22 October 2026 · Replaces the Performance Commission Progression v1.1 and the commercial provisions of the Founding Mentor Program v1.2 dated 11 October 2026