No way can CLAT happen this year, as there will be a 3rd and 4th wave after this 2nd wave declines, until 100% vaccination is achieved (probably by 2022). Thus, the consortium must meet ASAP and take a decision. Most feasible one is to join LSAT and do an online test, but ask LSAT to include CLAT sections like GK, maths etc.
Just confirming, in case there was doubt, that this comment was in fact posted by Yusuf Abdul-Kareem, who is LSAC's vice president of emerging markets and business intelligence.
I am shocked beyond belief man The thought of LSAC thinking it should enter the CLAT sphere and disenfranchise thousands of normal middle class aspirants [...] I want to type the choicest words here - but alas Kian’s moderation.......
In that case Kian, PLEASE PLEASE genuinely ask Mr Kareem what he can do. We need to plan in advance because 1 billion adults CANNOT get two doses twice before December. Can Mr Kareem ensure a foolproof online test based on the CLAT format but without charging Jindal prices?
Please ask this Kian, because it can be a game changer.
Can he provide laptop and internet access for 60000 students taking that exam and also ensure that they are trained to use the former before sitting for the exam? If not, then it is a useless discussion.
Wh do these "access" fanatics have to troll every thread seeking a constructive solution to the CLAT problem? Its ridiculous that thousands of students have to put their careers on hold because of a few supposedly "rural: candidates who supposedly do not have smartphones and computers and cannot borrow one for the exam (in which case, they could also not have taken CLAT tuition and will not pass the test anyway).
Funny also how it's always elite woke kids who claim to speak for these rural students. Have you every met them?
I have. I have taught them too. Have you? Why is your concern valid and others' concern trolling? If you feel that they can somehow arrange for laptop, internet, and usage training, then I feel that you can afford mask, gloves, face shield, sanitiser and protected transport to go to the exam hall and sit there for 3 hours.
CLAT is also an exam for the privileged. Why do people always have to portray that they are underprivileged? You guys are so much worse than JGU kids, you comfortably discredit and dismiss the actual underprivileged kids just for the sake of your argument. Do you even know what underprivileged means? There are people out there who can’t afford food. You guys get educated in extremely expensive coaching institutes and pay fees in NLUs that is nearly the average income of a common man in India. You, very comfortably sing the “privilege song” when it suits your needs because you want to cancel out the actual underprivileged kids and act like you’re the one but your exam which is CLAT is literally one impetus for privilege. Do you even realise that the language English is a privilege? Go check the number of people who don’t have enough resources to study in a decent school or an English medium school. But no, I haven’t seen you oppose that.
There are organisations and NGOs which provide laptops and internet to those who don’t have access. And this is like a 1 or 2 percent of people who appear for CLAT, please don’t act like all of you are underprivileged. Infact there are private centres which provide with computers and internet for a minimal price for exams if you don’t know. And infact this comes across as cheaper and more accessible for a lot of people. When CLAT is organised physically, there are costs involved in travelling too and one of the major reasons a lot of people don’t appear for the physical CLAT is that for people who live in smaller cities (which quite evidently have more underprivileged people but you won’t care about them) have to travel to different cities where CLAT has a physical centre, online CLAT allows for a lot of solutions. They also tried an online SLAT, where a video was surfaced and reported by LI too wherein a kid was easily using unfair means. But LSAC organises LSAT internationally and also in India, they have the requisite infrastructure and staff required for a smooth examination which is why no case emerged in LSAT India, in fact if any of you gave the exam you’ll realise there was no scope of cheating.
It is high time that people realise that online education and online examinations only increase accessibility and not the other way around. And please if you have enough resources to talk in English and publish comments on LI you’re not underprivileged, you’re cancelling out the real ones for the sake of your arguments.
Only someone born out of privilege and blissfully unaware of it would confuse between the Internet's potential to level the playing field and the claim that it has already done so in this country, at least enough for a national online entrance exam for public universities to take place.
NLUS must never join LSAT. CLAT as a exam though has some defects but at the end of the day, is a fair level game. If at my time we had to go for an exam like LSAT for NLUS , I would not have gone my college. Let's be honest, LSAT as a exam is by the elite, of the elite, for the elite. Students like me who comes from small cities would have never been able to make it to NLUS. I had given LSAT a few years back , it's only focus is ENGLISH!!!. Needless to say private universities like JINDAL should use this exam for LSAT not NLUS.
LSAT, with all due respect, is the worst if the kind entrance exam in India for the purposes of Law School admissions. Surely, CLAT has its own problems, but that cannot be the reason to discard it. Keeping aside the accessibility point of view, even LSAT couldn't conduct the online entrance test smoothly. There were server crashes and delays, some students registered for the exam did not get the links and no one picked up the calls at the helpline. Do not even get me started in the failure of the so called 'AI proctoring'. All this despite having just 4k-5k students. Another point to note is that despite the 1st wave peak (September) clat was conducted in offline centres. So once the cases come down, which they surely would,CLAT will be conducted albeit delayed. So the entire conversation about CLAT not being conducted is stupid at the best.
It would come as a surprise but CLAT is more transparent than LSAT. LSAT does not give information about the topper's exact score or what each individual actually scored in the exam and what is the exact rank ( especially important if you are eyeing for NLUs). They just have this opaque percentile system so one actually does not know what exactly transpires during/post the examination. Last but not the least, no one absolutely cares about LSAT performance. It's not even close to the top priority for any law aspirant worth his salt. All LSAT does is conduct some examinations for the private institutions out of which only Jindal is somewhat good but that also is out of reach to average Indian, urban or rural, with its 10 lac/annum fees.
P.s- I am writing this after scoring more than 96 percentile in LSAT and having secured scholarship in Jindal but afterwards opting for a NLU instead.
First of all, let me assume that you are a genuine student and not someone from the CCM lobby (Coaching Centre Mafia). There are hundreds of reasons why LSAT's system is better, but let me list 5:
1. Harvard, Yale Law School etc use LSAT. It has international credibility, unlike CLAT.
2. Percentile exists because Harvard , Yale etc look at percentile score plus CVs and interviews, to make an all round assessment. If NLUs refuse to look at CVs, then LSAT can always reveal the ranks if NLUs join LSAT.
3. Percentile system also exist because there is no separate merit list and separate SC/ST/OBC reservation list at Harvard or JGLS or any LSAT institution. There is a unified merit list without reservations.
4. LSAT tests you on skills you actually need as a lawyer. The emphasis on English is totally justified, no matter if it sounds elitist to some people. Try getting into Harvard Law School with weak English.
5. Regarding your point about rural students, that point has been made many times. It's a myth. Law is an elite profession requiring elite entry barriers. Get over it. Don't be a snowflake. Ask the government to start separate Hindi-language non-elite NLUs, if you have problems with that.
Almost everything you said is laughable and reveals your prejudice and very little else. The fact that your knowledge or logic doesn't match your statements can be proved with multiple examples. For now, I will just leave two for others to see:
1. Harvard, Yale etc. considers law as a post graduate course, not something to be taken out of high school. The expectations are completely different. Adding on to it, you yourself made apparent another glaring difference, they don't rely entirely on LSAT either, using CVs and interviews to supplement it. None of the institutions using LSAT for undergrad law entry in India does even that, which goes to show the instability of the system.
2. You are very right that reservations don't apply to (some) foreign universities and any private one in India, which makes the LSAT system easier to implement. So why in God's name are you trying to advocate in favour of the exam being used for public universities in India, where affirmative action needs to be provided as a matter of law? I'm fairly certain of your opinion on reservations based on the prejudice that drips from your comments, but it's still mandatory under law. Tough luck.
Your entire reply is based on why LSAT does what it does structure rather than it being a comparison with the CLAT , which supposedly is the actual topic of the conversation. Nonetheless, even CLAT with its new format and increasing focus on comprehension and critical reasoning is testing the actual skill that are necessary for a career in law. In addition to that it also tests the aspirants grasp of the realities around them in the form of current affairs which by the way is aslo necessary for law students. This gives CLAT an edge over LSAT. Moreover, CLAT has more than 60k aspirants while LSAT barely has 6K. It does not make any sense to do away with an exam that more students aspire to crack and to replace it with the one that no one is actually bothered about. No way in the comment it has been mentioned that LSAT is disadvantages for rural student or anything of the sort. The comment has been made in the context of Jindal ( the only college under LSAT worthy of admission) charging exorbitant fees which is out of reach for most Indians. In comparison NLUs charge one-tenth of that fees. I would not like to engage with the Harvard and Yale arguments as the conditions are quite different in both the countries. Both of the above mentioned colleges are extremely elite institutions and their in-take criteria is based on parameters that exists amongst their target groups. That in-take criteria cannot be imposed by Indian public universities atleast as of this moment.
The thought of LSAC thinking it should enter the CLAT sphere and disenfranchise thousands of normal middle class aspirants
[...]
I want to type the choicest words here - but alas Kian’s moderation.......
Please ask this Kian, because it can be a game changer.
Funny also how it's always elite woke kids who claim to speak for these rural students. Have you every met them?
There are organisations and NGOs which provide laptops and internet to those who don’t have access. And this is like a 1 or 2 percent of people who appear for CLAT, please don’t act like all of you are underprivileged. Infact there are private centres which provide with computers and internet for a minimal price for exams if you don’t know. And infact this comes across as cheaper and more accessible for a lot of people. When CLAT is organised physically, there are costs involved in travelling too and one of the major reasons a lot of people don’t appear for the physical CLAT is that for people who live in smaller cities (which quite evidently have more underprivileged people but you won’t care about them) have to travel to different cities where CLAT has a physical centre, online CLAT allows for a lot of solutions. They also tried an online SLAT, where a video was surfaced and reported by LI too wherein a kid was easily using unfair means. But LSAC organises LSAT internationally and also in India, they have the requisite infrastructure and staff required for a smooth examination which is why no case emerged in LSAT India, in fact if any of you gave the exam you’ll realise there was no scope of cheating.
It is high time that people realise that online education and online examinations only increase accessibility and not the other way around. And please if you have enough resources to talk in English and publish comments on LI you’re not underprivileged, you’re cancelling out the real ones for the sake of your arguments.
https://www.legallyindia.com/convos/topic/164562-CLAT-needs-to-go
It would come as a surprise but CLAT is more transparent than LSAT. LSAT does not give information about the topper's exact score or what each individual actually scored in the exam and what is the exact rank ( especially important if you are eyeing for NLUs). They just have this opaque percentile system so one actually does not know what exactly transpires during/post the examination. Last but not the least, no one absolutely cares about LSAT performance. It's not even close to the top priority for any law aspirant worth his salt. All LSAT does is conduct some examinations for the private institutions out of which only Jindal is somewhat good but that also is out of reach to average Indian, urban or rural, with its 10 lac/annum fees.
P.s- I am writing this after scoring more than 96 percentile in LSAT and having secured scholarship in Jindal but afterwards opting for a NLU instead.
1. Harvard, Yale Law School etc use LSAT. It has international credibility, unlike CLAT.
2. Percentile exists because Harvard , Yale etc look at percentile score plus CVs and interviews, to make an all round assessment. If NLUs refuse to look at CVs, then LSAT can always reveal the ranks if NLUs join LSAT.
3. Percentile system also exist because there is no separate merit list and separate SC/ST/OBC reservation list at Harvard or JGLS or any LSAT institution. There is a unified merit list without reservations.
4. LSAT tests you on skills you actually need as a lawyer. The emphasis on English is totally justified, no matter if it sounds elitist to some people. Try getting into Harvard Law School with weak English.
5. Regarding your point about rural students, that point has been made many times. It's a myth. Law is an elite profession requiring elite entry barriers. Get over it. Don't be a snowflake. Ask the government to start separate Hindi-language non-elite NLUs, if you have problems with that.
1. Harvard, Yale etc. considers law as a post graduate course, not something to be taken out of high school. The expectations are completely different. Adding on to it, you yourself made apparent another glaring difference, they don't rely entirely on LSAT either, using CVs and interviews to supplement it. None of the institutions using LSAT for undergrad law entry in India does even that, which goes to show the instability of the system.
2. You are very right that reservations don't apply to (some) foreign universities and any private one in India, which makes the LSAT system easier to implement. So why in God's name are you trying to advocate in favour of the exam being used for public universities in India, where affirmative action needs to be provided as a matter of law? I'm fairly certain of your opinion on reservations based on the prejudice that drips from your comments, but it's still mandatory under law. Tough luck.
Moreover, CLAT has more than 60k aspirants while LSAT barely has 6K. It does not make any sense to do away with an exam that more students aspire to crack and to replace it with the one that no one is actually bothered about.
No way in the comment it has been mentioned that LSAT is disadvantages for rural student or anything of the sort. The comment has been made in the context of Jindal ( the only college under LSAT worthy of admission) charging exorbitant fees which is out of reach for most Indians. In comparison NLUs charge one-tenth of that fees.
I would not like to engage with the Harvard and Yale arguments as the conditions are quite different in both the countries. Both of the above mentioned colleges are extremely elite institutions and their in-take criteria is based on parameters that exists amongst their target groups. That in-take criteria cannot be imposed by Indian public universities atleast as of this moment.