5 Important Changes in CLAT 2020
2019-11-23The Common Law Aptitute Test or CLAT is the entrance exam for admission to the UG law programs offered by the 21 National Law Universities of India. CLAT is conducted by the Consortium of National Law Universities with the aim of improving the standard of legal education in the country and justice system through legal education. 52 Private Universities accept CLAT score for admission into their 5 Year integrated law programs like B.A. LL.B and B.B.A. LL.B
CLAT 2020 will be held on May 10th in an offline (pen & paper) mode across mutiple cities in India. The Consortium of National Law Universities has indicated that CLAT 2020 will see major changes in its test pattern.
- No static G.K section: CLAT 2020 will not have static General Knowledge Questions. E.g. Which is the largest river in India. Instead, candidates will be assessed on their knowledge of current affairs. This is to ensure that the candidates selected to the NLU's are well aware of the current political, economic and legal events around them.
Our advice to candidates: Read newspapers regularly. - Inferential Reasoning: All sections are likely to have questions around inferential reasing. There would be complex texts/paragraphs provided and students would be expected to draw inferences from these. This change is primarily to move away from rote-based / memory-based learning.
Our advice to candidates: Do as many english comprehension / unseen-passage questions designed for Class 10, 11 & 12 - English Comprehension: This section will no longer test the proficiency of the candidate in English grammar. Instead, candidates will be assessed on their understanding of the passage and its central theme and the context in which a word is used. The stess is to move away from rote-based grammar knowledge to practical usage and meaning of words contextually.
Our advice to candidates: Read editorials and centre page opinion pieces of newspapers like The Hindu, Business Standard or magazine like The Frontline, Economic & Political Weekly. - Mathematics: This section will no longer stress on quantitative calculations based questions (e.g. calculate speed of vehicle etc.). Instead, the stress would be if the candidate can read and understand graphs, tables and other visual compilation of data. The focus would move from testing mathematical ability to the ability to understand and extract meaning from quantitative data.
Our advice to candidates: Focus on Class 8, 9 & 10 statistics, data analysis, graphs etc. - No. of Questions: There is going to be a drastic reduction in the number of questions in CLAT 2020 from 200 Qns to around 120-150 Qns. The duration of the test remains 2 hrs. In ther words, candidates will have more time to answer the questions than earlier.
The overarching purpose of the Consortium of National Law Universities in bringing about these changes in the CLAT 2020 examination pattern is to reduce memory-based testing and instead to assess candidates on their ability to apply their mind, think contextually and rationally.
Good luck!
About the author: Tarun is a Co-founder at MyExamPlan.com. He can be reached at tarun@myexamplan.com