What do I need to do?

A CLAT notification was expected by the end of October. But I have no idea why there hasn’t been anything by now. We’re trying to scoop some details, but it doesn’t seem like the nitty-gritty has been figured out just as yet.

It is my assumption that, as far as General Knowledge is concerned, there will only be Current Affairs. It is a safe assumption, but not safe enough to rely on it and prepare for CLAT.

If you are starting now, you are NOT unsafe. But it’d be necessary that you show a certain amount of reasonable sincerity and seriousness from today till the day you write your first Law Entrance exam.

First, divide time between your life (school, tuition, coaching, “special people”, partying, etc) and your Law Entrance prep. Second, divide time, in the latter section between:

a) Subjects you are weak in

b) General Knowledge prep.

(a) can be a variable. BUT (b), it MUST remain a constant. If the 24 hours that you have aren’t enough, then GK prep should be fitted in somewhere. You must begin by taking care of your Current Affairs preparation first.  As I have always emphasised, this is a simple, three-fold process: 1) Daily Newspaper (The Hindu, not the gossip riff-raff called ToI) 2) Weekly revisions/compendiums 3) Monthly review (magazines like the Pratiyogita Darpan).

It will be impossible for you to crack a decent paper without following this three-fold process. And it isn’t very difficult either. The newspaper will help you in increasing your reading speed, it will help you in keeping abreast with the happenings of the world, give you a better worldview and also help you in making your dream come true. 2 & 3 will ensure that you don’t forget what you read for a whole week/month. Read the newspaper, say, while you are having breakfast, travelling to your college/school, during your break between two subjects (say you are done with Logical Reasoning and you’re going to take a half an hour break before you start English – this half an hour break should be your newspaper time).

The newspaper is essential, if it is boring, I am really very sorry for you. Make notes assiduously, do not miss out on anything. If you find this to be a time consuming exercise, then what I’d suggest is you make the notemaking exercise a weekly/monthly occurence. You might lose out on an issue or might not understand the basics of something in the paper – google it immediately, if you don’t find anything, write to us. But do try to understand it, there is no point in reading, memorizing and vomiting it out.

This takes care of the Current Affairs segment more or less. Static GK – this is a hamlet question. It’d be better if we’re done with the basics. Not going to harm anyone, right?

You should be sound in your Economics, Political Science (Civics, as they like to call it), History (Medieval and Modern Indian, mostly) and Geography. By sound, I don’t mean that you read up on Krugman and Guha. By sound, I mean “are you smart enough to be a 10th grader?” sound. So, do the 10th Class NCERT books properly.

Here is what you should know, this is not a comprehensive list, but once you pick up a book, you’d know what I am talking about.

a. Indian political system – elections, parliament, council of ministers, powers of various offices (election commission, president, prime minister, etc), state, governor, right to information, etc (Simultaneously, learn the names of all of these people)

b. India’s foreign policy

c. India’s judiciary – the hierarchy, the positions, the system of judgments, the number of judges, basic terminology, etc.

d. Economics – Inflation, deflation and all of that, stock markets, banking, market conditions and the various “situations”, demand, supply, etc. Read ANY economics textbook – the basics.

e. Geography – Again, the basics that you will find in any decent textbook (alternatively, use the Pearson’s GK Manual)

f. History – The “firsts”, the wars, the battles, the nicknames of kings and others, special policies (like the marriage thingy that Akbar followed, or Khilji’s price control system), major events of the Independence movement (you’ll find this on CG), important ideologies – Marxism, Socialism, etc’s development, who overthrew/succeeded whom, the “ages” (the golden age, the stone age, the silver age, the boring age, blah and blah). I would say the likeliness of medieval and modern Indian history is more. However, ancient India turns up in cases where they’d like to ask specific developments of literature, science and the like. Manu is a favorite in these cases, so are the Vedas.

Current Affairs:

Everything.

As simple as that. Chuck the local and state news if you want to. But I’d suggest you do that too. In sports, look for records, major events, India’s firsts, etc. You can ignore the local and domestic tournaments & achievements – unless it is a “first in India” or a “record in India”. Reading Pratiyogita Darpan should be good enough.

Keep a lookout for awards, achievements and the like.

All the best.

Contact Us if you need further clarifications.

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