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An estimated 6-minute read

GNLU : A Beginner's Guide

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This is an updated version of my one year old post. Old post here.

So you gave CLAT and got through to Gujarat National Law University.

Congratulations!

I am sure you'll have a hundred questions about the University. You might even be considering whether to choose GNLU over some other University. Well, I hope this post helps you in deciding.

I’ll try to summarise what all things you can expect from the place.

Location:

Gandhinagar is Gujarat’s capital. It’s a very green city. Amazing roads. No traffic. If you are someone who likes the hustle-bustle of Mumbai then you’ll find the place boring.

Gujarat has prohibition, something I think all of us know about. There are no night clubs in Gandhinagar. There are very few good restaurants but that can be managed by going to Ahmedabad which is just 30 minutes away.

If you are someone who likes peace and serenity then Gandhinagar is the place for you. Transport is relatively cheap. People of Gujarat are famous for their  friendly behaviour and their helping attitude. Girls can roam around safely.

We have a 9:30pm curfew time for the college hostel which is good enough because there is hardly anything open in Gandhinagar post 10pm.

The new campus is closer to Ahmedabad but farther away from civilization. The government has planned a metro station right outside the University gate.

Campus:

The campus is amazing to say the least. 45 acres of developed land. A 3 storied library. Separate admin and academic building. It is among the best in the country.

As of now, apart from PDPU, there is not much around the campus. It is a developing area and you can expect it to be the centre of Gandhinagar in the coming years. It is very close to the proposed GIFT city.

Classrooms are similar to the ones you might see in an IIM.  They are semicircular and benches are on an elevated level. In short, you will not complain about the campus.

Hostels are still under construction. The new rooms are smaller than the ones we used to have in the old campus but I guess students don’t expect a studio apartment in a law school.

Still, when you see the rooms for the first time, you will react like Circuit from Munna Bhai MBBS “Ye room to shuru hote hi khatam ho gaya.” :D

Faculty:

Okay this is a toughie. I think I can safely say, like all NLUs and I think Universities in general, we have the excellent, the good and the ugly.

A few teachers are amazing. They will make you want to attend class. Sometimes, when you have a free class and that faculty is teaching in some other class, you’d want to go and attend that other class. Yea, they are that good.

Some of them are okay okay. We can’t call them good or bad. They are in-between.

Personally I feel that faculties are only there to guide you where to go. Legal Education should mostly be self learning.

So in terms of faculty, the University is definitely not number 1. But most of them are friendly and will help you with your doubts.

Students:

The best part about GNLU is the variety of students that we have. The year I joined I was told that GNLU has students from 26 states now. We are a diverse crowd. We have had it even before IDIA started working on it. :P

Students are very helpful.  There are 160 odd students per batch so there will be a lot of people you’ll get along with and learn from.

The students are the elements which make a university. Shri Jairam Ramesh will be happy to see that even though right now GNLU is not the country’s best law school, the students are right up there. :)

Seniors are very helpful. They will make you feel right at home from the very first day. There is almost no ragging. Everything done is in good humour and will be enjoyable for the new student as well. Nothing outward happens.

GNLU students appreciate talent. People will look at you with respect if you can sing, dance, play an instrument, are a good orator, can play CS like you are invincible, can write notes even during boring classes, have a good sense of humour, are a foodie or just have a good collection of movies/sitcoms. :D

Placements:

Yes, this is what everyone thinks is the most important way to judge a University. I disagree.

Contrary to popular opinion, GNLU has a very good placement record. You can check Legally India’s statistics for the past years.

GNLU is, according to me, one of the very few law schools in India from which a lot of students voluntarily go into litigation. That’s what NLUs were set up to do, right?

We also have a lot of students who go abroad for further studies. We have students in Harvard, Oxford and a lot of other reputed Universities.

The fact that GNLU has 160 plus students in a normal batch makes it even more difficult for the college to place all of them. Amarchand Mangaldas took 8 students from the 4th year students and Trilegal took 9. This happened on the Day Zero organised by the college. Other placements will happen once the University opens in July.

If you are a good student and you do decently in academics then you’ll get a job irrespective of which law school you join. So don’t worry about placements before you have selected a University.

So this is a brief overview of GNLU. Please be sure that this is not everything about GNLU. It’s just a basic outline. Ask specific questions to know more.

I won’t tell you what I think is GNLU’s rank in the country’s top law universities because frankly it doesn’t matter. No one gives a damn about the ranking yet people fight over it. I am personally against giving so much importance to Moots. MPL is a good way to judge a college’s mooting prowess but not enough to judge a college. So don’t read too much into it.

I am a fifth year student of GNLU. If you are someone who got through and wants more details then send me a message on my LI account.

Don’t ask me if you should GNLU over HNLU or NLU-J or NLU-Bhopal or NLU-D or any such thing. Every college has its positives and negatives. Choose wisely and then stick to it. Stop cribbing once you get into college.

P.S. – I’ll try answering all genuine queries that any one of you have in your mind. Post it in the comments.

Don’t judge a book by its cover or price, a person by his/her clothes/accent, a law student by his laptop/CGPA and a law school from its website/campus/MPL rank/India Today or Outlook rank.

All the best to everyone. I hope you have fun in law school because in the end, that's all that matters.

We have recently started a Facebook page for all queries that you might have. We saw that a few other NLUs have used their facebook page effectively and so we decided to replicate. You can find it here, The GNLU Forum.

See you in college :)

 

Update: As I have been asked this question by a lot of people, I decided it was worth a mention in the post. The question about the much talked about backlog initiative. Well, students are required to go to different courts for a period of two weeks and help the administrative staff. The point is to help them with categorizing the cases and suggesting any measures which could speed up the process. Unfortunately, due to the laziness of all parties involved, there is no work done. Students take it as a compulsory, University sponsored vacation and the other parties treat it as positive media. I did not mention it earlier because I thought it was a very small aspect and not something which would help you decide whether or not to choose GNLU.

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