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NLU Delhi now as tough as NLS, Nalsar, NUJS: 1 place per 100 aspirants

Ranbir Singh: Building another institution?
Ranbir Singh: Building another institution?
Exclusive: National Law University (NLU) Delhi saw 7,814 candidates fight for just 79 places, notching up 1,000 more applications than last year, while 60 per cent of its next intake will be women.

The result of NLU Delhi’s internal admissions test - the All India Law Entrance Test (AILET) - was declared today after having been held on 1 May 2010.

NLU Delhi’s vice chancellor professor Ranbir Singh told Legally India that the number of total applications the school had received this year was 9,000 while last year’s figure stood at only 4,000.

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) and the All India Law Entrance Test, Singh explained, were equally competitive and patterned on similar lines.

“The ideal I’ve had in my mind is that the success of a law school is dependent on the performance of its students and the more opportunities you provide them in terms of academic facilities, mooting, seminars, conferences, IT facilities,” said Singh.

“In a span of one year we provided them all of that,” he claimed. “I said, I will provide you the best of facilities and you give me your best performance.”

Singh added that although he was one of the key persons who had initiated the CLAT at NLSIU Bangalore, when he moved to Delhi he decided against adopting the CLAT.

“One reason was CLAT was too new, and the modalities were still not clear, also there were apprehensions about paper leakage,” noted Singh. “Second, CLAT is on the basis of preference and since NLU joined at number 13, I did not want it to receive preference at the bottom.”

This year’s AILET top scorer was Sonakshi Saxena who scored 118 marks out of 150 followed by Malika Chadha and Nayan Banerjee with 115 marks each. All three are pass-outs of DPS RK Puram. The cut-off mark for the general list of 62 at the AILET was 105 points, which was scored by 15 candidates.

Admitted scheduled caste reservation marks for 11 candidates ranged from 85 to 95, while six candidates gaining admission from the scheduled tribe reservation scored between 80 and 90.

Of the 7,814 candidates who appeared, 5,575 belonged to general category while nine with disabilities and 405 of reserved categories contended.

NLU-D vs CLAT schools?

Sunday’s CLAT saw almost 24,000 applicants compete for places at 11 national law schools, although other law schools also accept CLAT scores informally.

In the 2010 CLAT, 613 students from the so-called general list gained admission to one of the 11 law schools, out of 17,300 total applicants – odds of roughly 3.5 in 100 of getting a place.

NLSIU, Nalsar Hyderabad and NUJS Kolkata together awarded around 174 places to candidates on the general list – equivalent to odds of around 1 in 100, similar to those at NLU Delhi this year.

Update 22:46: The above figures explicitly included only general list places at NLS/Nalsar/NUJS, comparing these with total places at NLU Delhi. Including ST/SC and other reservations such as NRI quotas, there were a total of 236 places at the most popular 3 national law schools in 2010, which would have made the odds of reaching the cut-off 1 in 73.

Providing that the number of seats at the three law schools stay the same and assuming that 24,000 applicants pick those three law schools as first choices, the odds would be 1 in 98, just marginally below NLU Delhi this year, which more accurately is 1 in 99.

This calculation of odds does not take into account the odds of students topping the NLU Delhi also topping the CLAT and opting for a CLAT college.

Correction 19 May 2011: The original version of the article erroneously stated that 4,000 students took the NLU Delhi entrance exam last year. In fact, 6,658 students took the exam. We regret the error, which has been corrected.

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