Bengaluru: The results for the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) were declared on Thursday morning. The test, which was conducted online for the very first time, drew a mixed response from students. “The cutoff is lower, but the paper was definitely much more difficult than the previous years,” said John Williams, Academic Head, Bengaluru, Career Launcher, one of the city's foremost coaching institutes.
“The fact that it was an online test proved a deterrent, because a lot of students weren’t sure of how the software works,” said Anita T, Course Director, Paradygm Law, another well-known coaching institute in Bengaluru. “A lot of the candidates thought they did well but found that their scores don’t match their expectations. They want to send it back for re-evaluation, but unfortunately, that is not an option with CLAT,” she added.
The test will decide admissions to the some of the top law schools in the country, including National Law School of India University (NLSIU) Bengaluru and NALSAR, Hyderabad. The all-India exam was conducted on May 10 and organised by Ram Manohar Lohia National Law University, Lucknow and was held in 28 cities across the country. Around 45,000 candidates competed for the coveted law programmes - 39,686 students appeared for the Bachelor's Degree in Law and 5,514 registered for the Master’s programme.
Hitesh Kumar A, who stands 17th in Karnataka, says the NLSIU is his first choice. “This was my first attempt, but the online test didn’t bother me,” he said. “My institute, CareerLauncher, gave us the option of taking mock online tests, which I did. That was an advantage,” he added.
The Math and Legal sections came as a bit of a surprise, Hitesh said. “Math was difficult in comparison to previous years and the Legal Section, was very different,” he said. A PCMB student, who scored 97 per cent in his board exams, Hitesh says that law is his first love.
Shweta Sivaram, with an all-India rank of 88, has been with Paradygm Law for a year. “I also did a distance programme from LST,” she said. “The paper was much tougher this year - even the topper scored 141 out of 200, much, much lower than usual scores, which are in the late 150s and early 160s.”
