CLAT 2018 Exam Analysis & Cutoffs

By Vijay Jha

It is a matter of shame that the entrance test for the top law colleges in the country has always been mired in controversies. I cannot think about a single occasion in the last 5 years when CLAT was conducted smoothly. There are all types of problems, which one can think of, with CLAT: poor management at many centres, technical glitches (in the recent Computer Based Tests), answers appearing in the test itself (CLAT 2011), questions with all options incorrect, poorly framed questions, incorrect answers even in the “revised” answer-key, etc.

CLAT 2018, true to now well established CLAT tradition, had its own set of problems: students at many centres getting less than 120 minutes (the stipulated time), systems getting hung, outage, a couple of incorrect questions, and complete apathy from the side of the very people responsible for making it a smooth affair. Keeping this in mind that CLAT 2018 was the 11^th edition of CLAT, it is really surprising that the authorities have NOT been doing anything about it. CLAT continues to display its shamelessness unhindered.

CLAT is a very high-pressure test and the students appearing for it are very young. In a test like this, any technical or academic glitch (incorrect questions) causes two kinds of damage to the students: tangible and intangible.

CLAT tries to take care of the tangible damages (very arbitrarily in my opinion) by ignoring the incorrect questions during the evaluation, allotting compensatory time to the students who lose time during the test, etc, but what about the intangible damages? If you solve a question and do not find the correct answer among the options, your composure gets ruptured. It is not very different in case of technical glitches.

It comes out very clearly that the people managing CLAT are not suitable to this kind of work. Our country has created National Testing Agency (NTA), responsible for conducting tests which are now conducted by CBSE. Assuming that the NTA will be a professional body suitable for this task, should CLAT also not be conducted by a body like that?

Also, when we have a “Common” Law Admission Test, why should we be having different entrance tests for NLU Delhi, and Himachal Pradesh NLU?

About CLAT 2018:

This CLAT had a different user interface than its earlier versions. Also, the order of the sections had also been tweaked with. Of the 5 sections which appear in the test, Mathematics was the toughest. It was, probably, the most difficult Mathematics section ever in CLAT. Legal Aptitude was the easiest section. Overall, the test was slightly more difficult than CLAT 2017 and hence the cut-offs should come down slightly. It is for the first time that NLU, Aurangabad is under the CLAT umbrella. Also, there is some reservation in NLSIU, Bengaluru for the domiciles of Karnataka. I believe that a score above 108 should be enough for a candidate in general category to make it to at least one of the NLUs. A score above 130 should guarantee admission in one of the top three National Law Universities (BHK, in CLATers’ parlance).

CLAT 2018 Exam Analysis for English Section:

This section did not have those 10 spelling error questions this time, making the section more time consuming. There was one passage on Internet of Things (IoT) with 10 questions. Questions were easy to do but reading of the passage was not smooth because of the new interface and one had to scroll down several time to be able to finish the passage. The section had questions on almost all the testing areas in English: Antonyms, Synonyms, Cloze Test, Para-jumble, Summary, Grammar, Idioms, etc. Most of these questions were doable. One of the problems was that the questions of the same type were not put together and were scattered across the section, thus forcing students to read the same set of instructions again and again. One needed to be very careful here as there was a fair chance of one marking “the most inappropriate word” in place of “the most suitable word” and the vice-versa. An attempt of around 30-32 and a score of above 25 by spending 25 minutes can be considered good in this section.

CLAT 2018 Exam Analysis for General Knowledge Section:

The biggest surprise in this section was 20 questions on Static General Knowledge (CLAT 2017 had 4 questions on Static General Knowledge) and thus those students who make their strategy on the basis of only the last edition of a test were in for a shock. The remaining 30 questions were on Current Affairs. A few of these questions almost induced students to make mistakes: Indira Gandhi being the first woman defence minister (Nirmala Sitharaman is the first FULL-TIME woman defence minister), a question on 13^th May, 1952, etc.

An attempt of 35-36 and a score above 26-27 in 15 minutes can be considered good here.

CLAT 2018 Exam Analysis for Mathematics Section:

It was difficult and lengthy. The section had preponderance of Arithmetic, but Geometry, Mensuration, Probability, Algebra were all present here. It was NOT advisable to spend more than 15 minutes on this section. An attempt of 7-8 and a score above 5 can be considered good here.

CLAT 2018 Exam Analysis for Logical Reasoning Section:

This section was more or less on the lines of this section in the recent avatars of CLAT. Except for a set on arrangement of 10 ppl, the section was doable. This section also had a few tricky questions: the clock one, coding on the names of months, etc.

An attempt of around 30 questions and a score of 25 in 30 minutes can be considered good.

CLAT 2018 Exam Analysis for Legal Reasoning Section:

This was the section to score in. The section did NOT have a single question on Legal Maxims (CLAT 2017 had 15!). There were around 15 questions on static Legal Knowledge.

Almost all the questions were doable in this section and an attempt of around 45 and a score above 37 can be considered good here.

All the best for HPNLET and LSAT India 2018!!!

Know the college where you can secure admission by using CLAT 2018 College Predictor

About the Author:

Vijay Jha

Vijay has an experience of 18 years as a teacher of different competitive examinations. He was the National Academic Head of CL Educate Ltd for 5 years. He was the head of Marketing and Academics at Manya Education Private Limited (a franchisee of The Princeton Review).

Vijay has cleared many popular national and international entrance exams like CLAT, AILET, DU LLB, CAT, SAT etc.