Entrance exams like the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) are considered General Aptitude Tests. Unlike the popular entrance exams for Engineering or Medicine, these General Aptitude Tests focus on the general abilities of students including Linguistic skills (primarily English), Reasoning skills, Quantitative Aptitude (aptitude for numbers ) and/or General Knowledge and Current Awareness.
The prime purpose of such exams is to select students who have a good grasp on the fundamentals. Being academically gifted with a focus on rote learning may not be of much use to crack these exams. They require the student to be smart along with intelligent.
There are numerous entrance exams in the country including CLAT, AILET (NLU Delhi), SLAT (Symbiosis University), LSAT etc. These exams are of the General Aptitude kind with focus on the above mentioned subjects.
English
This section is all about testing the students’ proficiency with reading and comprehension, vocabulary and basic grammar. Those students who have paid attention to the basic English being taught at school and have developed a life long habit of reading more than the prescribed texts, will have absolutely no trouble in clearing this section.
Reasoning
This section is all about testing the student for their Analytical and Verbal reasoning skills. While Analytical reasoning is all about questions like number series, coding, relation, directions, puzzles etc., Verbal reasoning tests the students proficiency in reasoning through language via questions on assumptions, conclusions, arguments etc.
Mathematics
Although students claim to dread this section the most, this is probably the easiest section. It merely tests students on fundamental concepts taught at school in grades 8, 9 and 10.
Legal Aptitude
This section DOES NOT test the students’ knowledge about existing laws. Rather, it tests the ability of the student to comprehend a given principle and apply it to the given facts. All that a student requires to crack this section is a proficiency in English and the ability to think rationally.
General Knowledge and Current Affairs
This section is all about knowing whether the candidate is a mere bookworm or keeps abreast of the surrounding world and its happenings
The Preparation
While there are numerous coaching institutes that guide students prepare for the various Entrance Exams, a determined and disciplined student can actually prepare for the CLAT all by himself.
The first step is understanding what the exam is all about. Past year papers are made available through the official CLAT website. One must go through them to get a fair idea of the syllabus to be prepared.
Prepare a detailed list of topics (in every subject). Separate topics that you are well versed with from those that require more preparation.
Prepare a detailed schedule to learn and revise the topics.
There is a plethora of material available in the market to prepare for these exams. One can decide to either purchase the study material from a reputed coaching institute or can go for independent books on the various subjects which are easily available in leading bookstores or online portals.
The internet is a blessing for a student who decide to self prepare. Numerous free video tutorials for practically every topic are available which the student may freely access.
Once reasonably confidents with subject preparation, the student needs to start working on test taking strategy.
This is where Model Test Papers play an important role. After appearing for a model test paper under strict exam conditions, the analysis of the paper is extremely vital. One must not only analyse the questions that were unattempted or incorrectly attempted, but also those which were correctly attempted but consumed a lot of unnecessary time.
Analysis 5 model papers thoroughly is often more beneficial than attempting 50 model papers with no analysis whatsoever,
At the end of it all, exams like the CLAT are not just about Academic intelligence, but about discipline, hard and smart work and dedication.
All the best!
N. Sathyanarayan
Co-founder, Academic Director,
iQue ideas Pvt. Ltd.
(Alumnus – DoMS, IIT Madras)
Cracked
1. CLAT 2015, 16, 17, 18 & 19
2. UGAT 2016, 17, 18, 19 (with over 99.9 percentile each time)
