CLAT
Common Law Admission Test – National Law Universities
📌 Overview
CLAT is the common entrance test of the Consortium of National Law Universities for undergraduate BA LLB (Hons) / BBA LLB and postgraduate LLM seats in participating NLUs. Many private universities also accept the CLAT score. The official website is consortiumofnlus.ac.in.
CLAT UG is usually held in December for admission to the next academic year. The paper tests reading and reasoning more than rote legal knowledge at the UG level.
📋 Eligibility
- CLAT UG: Class 12 or equivalent. General / OBC / PwD / NRI usually need 45% marks; SC / ST 40% (confirm live notice). Appearing candidates may apply. There is no upper age limit in recent consortium rules.
- CLAT PG: LLB or equivalent with the minimum percentage notified (often 50% UR / 45% SC-ST).
📝 CLAT UG Pattern (recent consortium design)
120 passage-based MCQs, 2 hours, +1 / −0.25:
- English Language
- Current Affairs, including General Knowledge
- Legal Reasoning
- Logical Reasoning
- Quantitative Techniques
Each section uses short passages followed by questions. You do not need a law degree for UG Legal Reasoning — you need careful reading of the principle given in the passage.
CLAT PG focuses on constitutional law, jurisprudence and other core LLB subjects through comprehension-style questions (and, in some years, essays). Download the latest PG pattern from the consortium site.
🏆 Counselling
The consortium runs a centralised counselling portal. Candidates fill NLU preferences. Seats are allotted by rank, category, domicile (some NLUs have state reservations) and preference list. NLU Delhi historically conducts AILET, not CLAT — do not mix the two.
🔗 Official Resources
- Consortium of NLUs
- Sample papers and previous CLAT papers on the consortium portal
- AILET (NLU Delhi) is separate: nationallawuniversitydelhi.in
💡 Preparation Tips
- Read quality newspapers daily. Current affairs passages are drawn from recent events.
- Practise reading long texts at speed. CLAT is a reading exam more than a GK quiz.
- Legal reasoning: solve official sample passages; do not memorise the entire IPC before UG CLAT.
- Quantitative techniques stay at Class 10 level but appear inside data passages.
- Mock tests under 120-minute OMR conditions are essential.
🗂️ How to build your personal syllabus sheet
- Download the official syllabus / information handout PDF tonight.
- Copy every heading into a notebook page or spreadsheet.
- Against each heading write: Book chapter / NCERT unit / YouTube playlist name / last PYQ year you solved.
- Mark High / Medium / Low after you solve 3 years of PYQs — not before.
- Revise High topics four times, Medium twice, Low once, all with PYQs.
Current affairs — one method for every exam on this site
- Read (do not only watch): one newspaper or PIB daily digest.
- Make 5–10 lines per important scheme, report, judgment, RBI decision or science mission.
- Revise a 30-day file every Sunday and a 6-month file before Prelims / Mains.
- Link every CA note to a static syllabus heading (polity, economy, environment, banking, defence).
PYQ rule
- If a topic has not appeared in 8–10 years and is tiny in the official syllabus, keep it low priority.
- If a topic appears every year (polity articles, percentage, RC, banking rates, NCERT biology lines), it is High regardless of coaching “new pattern” videos.
📊 Exam Trend & Highest-Weightage Areas
Commissions do not publish an official chapter-wise weightage table. The points below come from public previous-year papers and widely used coaching analyses. Use them to decide revision order, not to skip a listed syllabus topic.
CLAT UG trends
- It is a reading paper. Passages from news, legal principle and data.
- Legal reasoning does not need IPC memorisation — apply the principle in the passage.
- Current affairs passages come from the last 8–10 months.
- QT is Class 10 and usually the smallest section.
📚 What Content You Should Actually Follow
- Official syllabus PDF of the current year — print it and tick topics.
- Official previous year papers (last 8–10 years) from the commission / NTA / IBPS / SSC website.
- One primary book per subject (listed below). Do not collect 10 PDFs of the same chapter.
- NCERT Class 6–12 where the exam is GS / science / maths based — free on ncert.nic.in.
- Current affairs only from a newspaper + one monthly compilation + the official PIB / ministry sites.
- Mocks that copy the live interface (sectional timer, NAT, descriptive box).
📖 Standard Books (widely used by serious aspirants)
- Polity: Indian Polity — M. Laxmikanth; NCERT Class 11 Indian Constitution at Work
- Modern History: Spectrum (Rajiv Ahir); NCERT Themes in Indian History Part III
- Geography: NCERT Class 11–12; Certificate Physical and Human Geography — G.C. Leong (selective)
- Economy: NCERT Class 11–12; Indian Economy — Ramesh Singh or Sanjiv Verma (selective); Economic Survey highlights; Union Budget summary
- Environment: NCERT biology ecology units; Shankar IAS Environment (selective)
- Science (SSC / RRB / GD): Lucent GK science + NCERT 6–10
- Quant / Maths (SSC): SSC previous papers + Rakesh Yadav / Kiran PYQ or equivalent type-wise book; NCERT 8–10 for basics
- Quant (Bank / CAT): Arun Sharma or Sarvesh Verma selectively; daily DI sets
- English grammar: Wren & Martin (selective) + Neetu Singh (KD Campus) Plinth to Paramount / SP Bakshi Objective General English
- Reasoning: R.S. Aggarwal (foundation) + exam-specific PYQ book (Kiran / Adda / Oliveboard)
- Static GK: Lucent General Knowledge; one atlas (Oxford / Orient Blackswan)
- JEE / NEET Physics: H.C. Verma; D.C. Pandey or Physics Galaxy; NCERT exemplar
- JEE / NEET Chemistry: NCERT first; N. Awasthi / M.S. Chauhan / V.K. Jaiswal as level demands
- JEE Maths: Cengage or Arihant series + previous JEE Main / Advanced papers
- NEET Biology: NCERT Class 11–12 line by line; MTG / All-in-one only after NCERT
- CAT VARC: past CAT RCs; a good newspaper editorial habit
- GATE: standard UG textbooks of the branch + made-easy / ACE previous paper books + official GATE papers on the organising IIT site
Buy the latest edition. Second-hand previous-year paper books are enough for practice. Coaching photocopies are optional.
🌐 Official & Open / Free Content (use these first)
- NCERT textbooks (free PDF)
- ePathshala
- NPTEL — free engineering / science lectures by IIT faculty
- DIKSHA
- Press Information Bureau — authentic government news
- Union Budget & Economic Survey
- RBI — monetary policy, bulletin (banking / RBI / NABARD / SEBI)
- UPSC previous papers and cut-offs
- SSC notices and some paper archives
- IBPS information handouts
- NTA — JEE, NEET, CUET, UGC NET, CSIR NET mocks and keys
- SWAYAM — free university courses
- Khan Academy (free world-class maths / science videos mapped to school level)
- Official mock / practice portals of NTA, IBPS (when opened) and JoSAA / MCC counselling brochures
Prefer a government PDF over a random Telegram file. Fake “memory-based papers” with wrong keys waste months.
▶️ YouTube Channels & Teachers (free classes — pick ONE per subject)
These are well-known public education channels. They are not official partners of this website. Watch playlists, not 10 live classes a day. Pause and solve; do not only listen.
School / JEE / NEET foundation
- Physics Wallah (Alakh Pandey) — Physics and complete JEE / NEET boards-to-entrance path; also Defence / SSC verticals under PW
- Khan Academy India — calm concept videos for Maths and Science
- ExamFear / LearnoHub — chapter-wise school Science and Maths
- Physics Galaxy (Ashish Arora) — JEE Physics depth
- Mohit Tyagi — JEE Mathematics (long but thorough playlists)
- Unacademy JEE / NEET and Vedantu JEE — free live plus recorded batches
UPSC / State PSC
- Mrunal Patel — Economy, Budget, Economic Survey (also useful for RBI / NABARD)
- Drishti IAS — Hindi + English current affairs and GS
- StudyIQ IAS — daily CA and subject crash courses
- Vision IAS — current affairs and strategy videos
- ForumIAS / OnlyIAS / Sleepy Classes — optional and GS answer writing samples
- Unacademy UPSC — free editorial and GS sessions
SSC / Railway
- Gagan Pratap Maths — type-wise SSC Maths
- Rankers Gurukul (Aditya Ranjan) — arithmetic for beginners
- English with Rani Ma’am and KD Live (Neetu Singh Ma’am) — SSC English
- Parmar SSC — exam-oriented GA / GS
- Adda247 SSC, Wifistudy, Testbook SSC — live practice
Banking / Insurance / RBI / SEBI / NABARD
- Adda247 Bankers — full IBPS / SBI path, daily CA
- Banking Wallah (Physics Wallah) — puzzles and bank syllabus classes
- Oliveboard and Guidely — mock discussion and mains DI / puzzles
- AffairsCloud / BankersAdda written CA — monthly PDFs (website + YT recap)
- Mrunal again for RBI Grade B ESI / economy
CAT / Management
- Rodha — CAT Quant
- 2IIM CAT — VARC and strategy
- Anastasis Academy / Elites Grid — DILR sets (use free videos + official CAT papers)
GATE / ESE / CSIR
- NPTEL — first choice (IIT faculty, free)
- GATE Academy / Made Easy / ACE YouTube — previous paper discussions
- Unacademy GATE — free plus structured batches
Law / CUET / NET
- LegalEdge / LawSikho free CLAT sets and consortium sample papers
- CUET Adda / PW CUET — domain NCERT walk-throughs
- Let’s Crack UGC NET / Unacademy NTA-UGC — Paper 1 playlists
How to watch: one teacher per subject, 1.25× speed, notebook open, 30-minute video + 30-minute self-practice. Unfollow extra channels.
🗓️ A Simple Content Routine (works for almost every exam on this site)
- Morning (60–90 min): newspaper or PIB + 10 MCQs of yesterday’s CA
- Mid-day (2–3 hrs): one static / core subject from the official syllabus with a standard book
- Evening (90 min): PYQs of that chapter + error log
- Night (45 min): weak-area drill (CSAT / English / formulae)
- Weekly: one full mock in exam conditions + 2-hour analysis
- Monthly: revise the error log, not the whole bookshelf
✅ Open-source & low-cost practice platforms
- Official PYQ PDFs (UPSC, NTA keys, IBPS memory-based after official handout)
- NTA Abhyas / practice tests when the exam window opens
- Free weekly mocks: Oliveboard, Testbook, Adda247, Gradeup/BYJU’S Exam Prep (limited free tier)
- Anki / any free flashcard app for formulae and polity articles
- Google Arts & Culture / Survey of India maps for geography outline practice
⚠️ How to treat coaching names on this page
Book names and YouTube teachers are listed because lakhs of students already use them in public. This site does not sell their courses and does not guarantee a rank if you watch them. Always cross-check facts with the official syllabus and previous papers. If a video contradicts the official notification, trust the notification.
⚠️ Disclaimer
Question count was reduced to 120 in recent years; the consortium can revise it. Use only consortiumofnlus.ac.in for dates, fees and pattern.
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