CLAT repeat takers commonly start their practice around this time of the year. Needless to say that this time they will try and leave no stones unturned and try and put in their best efforts. Here are a few tips for them to prepare for CLAT 2020 and make sure they emerge with flying colors.
TIP 1. Several among you are in the first year of graduation and at the same time, preparing for your CLAT examination simultaneously. Remember, at this critical juncture of your life, you cannot help but be good at time management and convince yourselves that CLAT preparation does not actually require 4 – 5 hours of daily studies. If you ask any CLAT ranker, he/she will tell you that it is exactly like a systematic investment plan of any mutual fund. Experts also suggest that 2 – 3 hours of daily preparation should be your way ahead over the next 4 – 5 months. And also remember 7 – 8 hours every weekend or 4 – 5 hours every alternate day will not help. Preparing for CLAT has to be a daily routine. Meticulous time management will help you in balancing college and CLAT studies
TIP 2. Those who have decided to drop a year and are only preparing for CLAT 2020, must have got many words of advice from people telling you that this year is your now or never moment. However, don’t let these unreasonable expectations pressurize you in any way. The intent of the repeat attempt is to reach the peak of YOUR potential, which will be different from SOMEONE ELSE’s potential. Therefore, set a realistic goal as to how much will you score in CLAT. Besides, it would be wise to also prepare for other law entrances like AILET, SET, MAH Law CET, ALCAT along with CLAT to keep your options open. Towards the end of the 2020 law exam season, you should be able to convince yourself that dropping one year was simply worth it.
TIP 3. For whatever reason, you did not score enough to get into your dream law school last year, let bygones be bygones. Forget ruminating about those reasons and start afresh. Just take 2 – 3 key learnings and walk ahead.
TIP 4. It has been observed that generally there are certain gaps that lead students to score low during exams. Here, it is advised that you should know them from before so that you can avoid them.
(a) Knowledge Gap –
(1) This leads to low attempts. Remember, the high accuracy of attempted questions alone does not help you get a good score. You should go back to the basics and brush up your concepts. Consciously spend more time on weaker areas. If you keep practicing things that you know well and score high on them, it will lead to a ‘feel-good’ mindset. And in the long run, it will not boost your scores.
(2) It is a must that you solve all past CLAT and AILET papers before taking this test. These are publicly available and are “closest to CLAT”. Practice with these papers and you are all set for the big day. Once you attempt 1800 questions from past 9 CLATs and 1350 questions from previous 9 AILETs, do you really expect to get questions very different from those that you practiced on, to appear in CLAT 2020 and AILET 2020?
(3) CLAT 2020 may still throw some surprises. Therefore, join a good test series program and develop a habit to come across surprises and handle them as well. By now, you should have taken 3 – 4 mock CLATs and analyzed your performance. The act of revisiting every question and going through its respective answers will help you prepare best for similar questions in the future.
(b) Efficiency Gap –
This leads to low accuracy. Attempts are typically high, but accuracy is not. A negative marking scheme leads to a low score. This can be treated in many ways.
(1) Adhere to a time-bound approach for every question and section. Although there is no sectional time limit in CLAT, one has to have an internal clock ticking. It is expected that you should have assigned certain time to the section level, which will trickle down to question level time allotment. Once done, you should not deviate too much from section level time allotment; else you could end up spending too little time on a relatively easy section. This has a direct impact on accuracy.
(2) Select the right questions – High scorers are good at sensing the right questions. They are good at scanning through the paper to identify sitters, followed by simpler but little time-consuming questions. Such questions could be anywhere, even towards the end of the section or paper as well.
(3) Do not typecast any topic as per your comfort level – In CLAT paper, as is the norm, you may come across difficult questions from topics of your high comfort level. Chances are, you may also come across absolute sitters from topics of low comfort level. So, judge every question by its worth and don’t typecast any topics as per your previously perceived comfort level.
(4) Finally, use the smart method of ‘option elimination’ as a smart technique to reduce the attempt time per question. This will, in all probability, increase your overall attempts and accuracy.
So, keep in mind that CLAT repeat takers have an obvious edge over first-timers, only if they get the above acts right. Watch this space for more tips on CLAT 2020 preparation.