“You win some, you lose some.” The starter pack that every competitive examination on the face of the earth comes with. CLAT 2017 was nothing different and all the anger you hurled at the botch up (rightly so, if I may add) did result in the CLAT Committee issuing a revised answer key. Again, a win-some, lose-some situation.
Until last night, your individual scores were all you were aware of and what remained was the yearning for digits that will serve as your ticket to a law school in the country. Your marks, along with the hard work you put in, will be reduced to these digits. Factors like negative marking, your score in Legal Aptitude and your age matter more than ever as you try to compete with aspirants who have scored similarly. At the end of the day, CLAT is nothing but a gamble. But isn’t everything else?
I do not intend to discourage you from embarking on anything that resembles a leap in the dark because where’s the thrill if you do not. I understand that career ka sawaal hai but your career comes with risks that you have to take at the very start of it. You might not be able to control the outcome of this risk but you can surely decide how you let it affect you.
To those of you who have made it, congratulations! Go read this article or find the relevant student-run page of the NLU that you have secured a place at, to bombard them with questions. Here is the archive page, if you are too lazy.
If you haven’t cracked the exam, all I can say to you, to make you feel better, is that there is something out there that is waiting for you. It might even be better than the “law school dream” and is worth giving another shot.
You cannot let yourself be reduced to a rank; you are so much more than just numbers. You cannot even be bogged down by the “survival of the fittest” funda because a competitive exam is nowhere close to deciding how well you fit in this world, let alone an exam like CLAT that gets moody with each passing year.
Maybe, this is your chance of getting out of the rat race and doing something you truly love. Have you ever considered how happier you would be if you had made a different career choice but just for the sake of peer pressure, you ended up choosing the road to CLAT? For a moment, pause. Take a deep breath. Ask yourself if law is really your calling. If no, then what are you waiting for? (Tip: Watch the masterpiece Tamasha to grasp what I am talking about)
If you still feel law is your calling and you really have that raging fire in you to make it to a law school, you have another chance, a year from now. Give your everything this year and I can tell you from experience (I dropped a year myself), it will pay off. Just ensure you don’t lag or procrastinate. And follow CLATGyan regularly.
I understand that there is the 
situation of this attempt having been the last attempt that you could make. There are hundreds of people still making it big in whatever capacity by their contributions and they do not belong to any of the so-called “prestigious” law universities in the country. You could be one of them! Additionally, there is always the option for you to excel wherever you are in whatever you do, that reminds me of The Merry Wives of Windsor, a play by William Shakespeare:
Why, then the world’s mine oyster / Which I with sword will open.
It has been the 7th year that CLATGyan has helped thousands of CLAT aspirants all over India in their CLAT preparation. We shall be sharing their stories on our website and would love to further inspire you! Please feel free to write to us at clatgyan@gmail.com with any law school related query or dilemmas that you might be facing. We’ll do our best to help you. 🙂
Zainab.
Hi! Great post. I got a decent rank this year which can get me into NUJS. I also cleared AILET. So, its NUJS Vs NLUD all over again. Please give me the pros and cons of both. A little more info – NLUD is closer to my hometown and this is why my family favours it. I have not yet decided what I want to practice litigation or corporate. I guess this is something that I will figure out during these 5yrs. I have heard that NLUD has a very competitive and stressful atmosphere and focuses on academics whereas NUJS offers a comparatively chilled life and focuses more on honing skills and that NLUD is best for practice and offers smaller packages whereas NUJS is best for corporates and offers great packages. Please help me. I can’t decide which one to choose.
I will suggest you Nlu d. I, myself have got NALSAR and NLU D. I will be going to going to NLU D because of its perk of being a progressive and rapidly growing institute. Delhi is also the law capital of India. It is also considered to have one of best faculties and campus. Ofcourse, the choice is completely personal. If you do your best and stay on the top of your college then there would certainly be no difference among the top 5 colleges.
I totally agree with you. After a lot of thinking, I’ve decided to join NLUD. See you at NLUD 🙂
Kids DO NOT listen to these two !!!! They are now themselves crying on an average 7 times a week. Having spent a semester in NLUD, let me tell you that NLUD is designed to destroy your capacity to dream and turn your into a hollow shell of your former (alive) self. There are no people in NLUD – just corpses walking. DO NOT, and in case I haven’t made it clear enough – DO NOT choose NLUD unless you don’t have any other option.
“Competitive” is a nice euphemistic way to put what NLUD really is. Competition builds character and makes the best shine. However, what NLUD has isn’t “competition”. It is war. It is reminiscent of a Hobbesian State of Nature where there is a constant state of “War of All Against All “. Like any war, there are no winners here – just survivors. Those who “win” here are have actually lost their souls, so in a cost benefit analysis, their “victories” are too costly to be celebrated. The smiles here are hollow. The pride in this place is a lie we constantly tell ourselves in order to hide from the reality.
NLUD is not a University – it is a war zone.
P.S. I know you already made your choice. There is no one by the name of Parzival in my batch. So, good call. As for you – Dubey (let me tell you – here in college, we are great friends and often hang out together. I’m also a part of the QC ) and Vedangini, you both should be ashamed of not coming back here and correcting your “opinion” even after knowing the truth about our fucked up college. New kids would also look at your comments and make their decisions.
Whoever you are, you are absolutely right. Even the placements this year are fucked. Total 9 people got placed on Day Zero this year. I would strongly recommend people to follow advice from the above comment
Contact me on palashsr.98@gmail.com for more advice.
Dear NLUD 1st year, just because you have lost your shit after coming here doesn’t mean that everyone has lost themselves and have become ‘corpses’. I too am good friends with both of them and know for a fact that they have become a lot smarter and aware about issues than if they would have joined any other college. NLUD will give you ample of opportunity to discover yourself and stimulate your interests. Just because the academics were a bit hectic in the first sem doesn’t mean people have become a hollow shell of themselves. Now, NLUD has it’s faults but these comments are an exaggeration. These students are the ones you should avoid interacting with unless you do want a serious case of depression. An advice for the above 1st year student- learn to deal with shit, talk to people about your problems and get have some positivist attitude or the world will eat you alive.
Dear Yoda (its not a very smart alias. Star Wars reference gives you away) your comment is absolute crap.
Any people wishing to take opinions about NLUD, first and foremost I’d like to draw your attention to the sentence “These students are the ones you should avoid interacting with unless you do want a serious case of depression.” This carries the assumption that talking to (allegedly) depressed people would give you depression. Now I’m not one of the smart people here (certainly not as smart as the omniscient and omnipotent being who has written the above comment) but even I can tell you that depression is not contagious. Based on this stupid assumption, a call is made to avoid interactions with the person. This exclusionary attitude is the pride of this campus. Anyone who doesn’t see the “stimulating” and “intellectual” atmosphere and all the other brochure bullshit in concentration camp called NLUD should be excluded? We here readily accept the disturbing number of sexual harrasers because they speak like us, dress like us and make the same elitist pop culture references as us; but interactions with someone who disagrees with your infantile fairy tale about NLUD should be avoided ?
Yoda tries to paint the comment by NLUD 1s Year as mere whining by someone who couldn’t handle 1st sem academics (because such obnoxiously arrogant presumptions are the way on life in NLUD) when the comments by NLUD 1st Year make no reference to the academics. They try to ignore the deeply systemic problems which are pointed out in those comments- the unhealthy rivalry, constant toxicity (what other word would you use for a place where a laptop was thrown from down the hostel window over mooting rivalry? ) and the complete absence of any enthusiasm over any non CV related activities.
Also “NLUD will give you ample of opportunity to discover yourself and stimulate your interests.” How ? By the pathetic 2-3 defunct activity groups? Or by the 95% compulsory attendance?
NLUD would do exactly what the comment by Yoda does- try to blame anything on the sufferer. Instead of trying to see the truth in issues someone has with someone or something, they spew disgusting crap like “grow up” “get your shit together” or “you are too negative”. Notice the similarity between this and the “advice” which women complaining of sexism recieve- “Grow up and stop blaming the system. Learn to deal with the world”. This is NLUD for you.
P.S. I was pissed at NLUD 1st Year for not coming out with their identity, especially since I was being accused of writing that comment. Now I can see why you wouldn’t want to come out before people who instead of listening to you, would only attempt to drag you into their pueril la la land of “NLUD is a great place”. Instead of thinking about ways to escape alive when you tell them that the boat is sinking, they yell at you that the sinking boat is in fact neither sinking nor a boat – it is a magnificent ship, and you should get some positivist attitude. I hope you are telling the truth and we ARE friends. It we aren’t I’m open to being friends, no matter how negative our relationship till now has been. If you don’t want to talk to me, know this – you aren’t the one to blame for this mess no matter what these fantasy land dwellers say. You also aren’t the only one who feels this way. The only part I agree with from that pathetic comment by Yoda is that you should talk to people. Find someone you can trust and are willing to listen even if they disagree with your story. Trust me it helps. Also don’t hesitate to speak about the truth of this hellish college. You don’t owe anything to the ‘public image’ or any such nonsense these naysayers would lecture you about.
Hey hey thank you!! Will be seeing you at NALSAR this year hueheu
My AIR in AILET is 7X (I missed the cut for NLUD by 3 damn marks). I’ve checked out the 2016 records and people with ranks as low as 94 have made it to NLUD through the spot counseling. Also the girl who got an AIR 7X in AILET 2016 (i.e. the same rank as mine in AILET’17) made it to NLUD.
What are my odds of making it through spot counseling ?
I just wanted to thank you for that movie streaming website that you’ve linked.
Now I can watch this Documentary that I wanted to for such a long time.
Thanks!
:’)