Hello,

I'm a final year Delhi University English Lit major going through a bit of a career crisis. After realising in my second year that I had absolutely no shot at getting an even moderately lucrative job with my BA, I started preparing for CAT. I ended up doing quite well in CAT '23 and have a pretty good profile (by b-school admission parameters), so I got interview calls from all but one of the top six IIMs. I am fairly confident that I will get an offer from either IIM Lucknow, Indore or Kozhikode, if not Bangalore or Calcutta.

Unfortunately, I was a little short-sighted during this whole process and chose to wilfully ignore the fact that I would probably hate the kind of job I would get after an MBA and be pretty horrible at it too. Firstly and most importantly, I'm terrible with numbers. I can handle them when I spend months and months working at simple concepts, like I did for CAT and my 10th boards, but I have no natural aptitude for them whatsoever. Can't imagine working in a job where I deal with them all day every day. I don't really know if I have a "head for business", whatever that means, since I've never taken any interest in it before this. I'm an analytical thinker much more than a strategist.

I'm also not very good at managing myself, let alone other people. Besides being a bit scatter-brained, I'm very easily exhausted by interacting with other people. I'm not some sort of hermit, I have a good circle of friends and can talk about almost anything, but have very little inclination to be social with those outside said circle. My (clinically diagnosed, before you come at me for being dramatic) anxiety disorder and being on the mildest end of the autism spectrum don't help.

I do realise that given all of this, law is far from ideal for me either. But I think it's the only profession that is at least somewhat suited to my aptitudes and personality while being largely stable and not paying a starvation wage. I should've realised this 3 years ago and gotten into a 5-year programme, but I was too caught up in my fantasies of being an academic or a journalist at that point.

So, is a 3-year LLB a viable option for me? I'll be giving NLSAT soon, since NLS's LLB is very appealing to me, but I've heard that there are significant issues with it. Also considering DU's faculty of law and possibly GLC Mumbai. These would obviously be much more affordable, but I've heard that it's very hard to get into corporate law through them. Is that true? Is NLS's LLB likely to be any better? Also, if I'm being delusional about any of this (especially about being unsuited to management and suited to law), please feel free to burst my bubble.

Thank you!!

Hi, Please be a little easy on yourself, making such judgements about your own self at such young age is not the right thing to do. At this age you cant even realise what you are capable of. Everybody can do any kind of work given proper training and a right attitude. MBA is a better option if you want to start earning well from day 1 as the market for MBA graduates is bigger and I am sure you would find a place for yourself. If you choose to pursue law just kn

NLSIU B.A LLB student here. I honestly think that if you get into the top IIMs (Bangalore or Calcutta), you should go for their MBA blindly. They are a class apart, and even if you do not get into a Big 4 firm (which is not the end of the world, by the way), you will still have a much better career and earnings than anyone at any law firm apart from the T1s. If you get into any of the other top IIMs, I would still recommend that you do an MBA there, apart from maybe IIM Indore, as they also have an IPM program whose students secure around 75% of the top placements there. (I know this because last year, I had secured admission to the IPM program there but left it for NLSIU, and have many of my friends enrolled there.)

Unless you have good contacts at a very high level, T1 law firms are unlikely to recruit 3-year LLB students, as they have 5-year LLB students readily available. Additionally, you mentioned that you suffer from anxiety, which could affect your performance at the T1 law firms, known for their ultra-high-pressure work culture. Do not hedge your hopes on getting a campus placement at McKinsey or EY at NLSIU (provided you secure admission here), as both these firms recruit only 3 or 4 people combined each year at NLS.

I do not know much about DU’s Faculty of Law, but I can comment on GLC Mumbai. If you want to do law, then I would suggest that you try your best for NLSIU and only take up GLC as the last possible option. In GLC, the basic meta is to intern your ass off for 3 years and hope to strike a PPO. The problem with this is that, again, you shall have to compete against 5-year BA LLB people who will have more time to intern compared to you. Also, please note that T1.5 to T2 law firms are not at all as remunerative as compared to the T1.5 to T2 recruiters at the top IIMs.

In conclusion, I suggest you do the MBA and work on overcoming your challenges instead of going for a 3-year LLB, as the harsh reality is that relatively few people have had success in law with only a 3-year LLB in recent times. Litigation is, of course, a totally different story altogether.

Hope this helps.

Am an ADHDer at a tier 1 B School, ex T3 NLU. You don't need to be extremely great with numbers unless you want to major in Fin, and realistically, a fresher is gonna get into something like Mktng/GenMan anyways. No one has an inherent aptitude for anything tbf (most folks I know here are "fake it till ya make it" at this point) plus I thought I would enjoy a law firm job but turned down an offer and join a B School the very next year because of the kind of repetitive mundane tasks junior associates are expected to perform. Plus, as a top B School grad, you have a legitimate expectation of being treated with atleast a certain modicum of dignity, while even you were a NLS grad, you might routinely face toxicity at workplace. Hope this helps!