Hello Seniors,

I am a student who is about to join WBNUJS this year for BSc LLB degree.

I have heard rumours about BSc being treated unfairly by admin and students body also and also a very competitive culture at the college generally which leads to many toxic incidents. Can you shed light on this and how to deal with it? I have also heard that there is a lot of alienation of certain individuals for no reason at all. This is scary to hear.

I am scared to join because of rumours about this toxic and dangerous environment, especially for BSc students and also within batches and I would really like reassurance/tips/truth on how to deal with this.

Mods please approve and seniors please help as I am unsure about choosing a college due to this and do not know how to approach a senior for this matter as scared I am.

If you are going to the university to learn and do well in your chosen career, then all you need to do is attend the classes regularly, do the background readings, talk to your seniors and faculty about how to handle your academic and co-curricular activities well, connect with the alumni, opt for useful credit courses, focus on your grades and do your internships. Let everything else be secondary and of little relevance to you.

This conveys a fantastical view of how to do things which is likely to be extremely unhelpful. I wish I could do better, but as someone who hasn't been to NUJS, I don't feel qualified to speak. However, I will say this: lots of questions are left unanswered. How on earth does the OP manage extracurriculars/academics if the atmosphere is cutthroat? How does OP maintain her (or his) mental health in such circumstances? RCC is made up of students. How does OP do things successfully on that front if she doesn't know how to navigate whatever politics it is riddled with? While the 'head down' approach does have a few things to recommend it, I think more useful advice would be to explain to OP the nature of student toxicity at NUJS, the different way(s) it manifests itself and how OP may possibly be impacted by it, how (if possible) to avoid some of that, how to deal with it where it can't be avoided etc.

OP, if you are reading this, not to dampen your enthusiasm or anything mate, but from what I have heard, they can get pretty nasty down there. An acquaintance of mine who is blind studied there and was prevented by a classmate, who played a trick which was way below the belt with my blind acquaintance's technology, from participating in an online competition (I won't provide further details here, because I share the mods' anxiety about potentially revealing identifiable information). For everyone other than OP, do all the shouting you like about this being a one-off and perhaps you might even be right, but also reflect on what that (somebody thinking it is okay to take advantage of a disabled person, in supposedly one of the nation's top law schools, in 2024) reveals about the place and its atmosphere.

For someone who has never been to the place, you seem to be too eager to criticise it. As for the suggestions, I have followed those myself and recently graduated from there with decent grades, a top job offer under the belt and available opportunities for higher studies and the goodwill of several established alumni. I never mooted myself, but did end up with a decent CV otherwise. I came from a middle class family, had taken a student loan, got the merit cum means scholarship, and was a first generation law student. Instead of parroting words like toxicity or judging other people with half baked information, I preferred to help those who asked for it and got helped by others in return. I also spoke about my political opinions and social views clearly when asked, but chose not to throw them into others' faces unwanted. Did face challenges of my own in my five years, but thankfully got an amazing set of parents, friends, seniors and a few faculty who helped me overcome those. I will leave it to the OP whose version and suggestions they would choose to follow, yours or mine.

In case you have noticed, I haven't provided any 'suggestions'. All I was saying (and no doubt I expressed myself a bit too warmly) is that there are toxicity problems in NUJS, as there are in all competitive institutions, and any attempt to say otherwise would be nothing more nor less than the merest eyewash; in addition to this, I gave a factual account of one incident. Am I saying OP shouldn't go to NUJS because of that? Of course I am not! Nobody is that stupid!

The OP needs to be prepared to handle that stuff, which the previous comment wasn't giving helpful advice for OP to do. You have, in fact, provided that helpful advice, so props to you for doing that. In fact, if I were OP, I'd say you have been even more helpful, for you have stated the obvious to make sure the understanding on how not to be toxic yourself is clear.

This is not untrue. This platform and all state NLUs are infested with humanities students, and they think law is the fiefdom of those with humanities backgrounds. They detest any other domain like BBA-LLB (H) and BSc.LLB (H). The only way to deal with them is to silence them with your performance. Let your performance do the talking. Good luck.

The students are indeed competitive, but isn’t that a good thing? There is a little toxicity and some amounts of double dealing but remember you will face toxicity and double dealing in the industry too, so why not get used to it?

Coming to the point of BSc students being treated unfairly; this is absolutely not the case. In fact non ba llb students get the most privileges like better rooms, permission to sit in the better areas of the library etc. Once you come here you will notice that there is even a particular water cooler in the acad bock which only non-ballb students get to use.

if people here at NUJS are good at any but one thing, it is to daunt and intimidate others. Yes, some sort of rivalry does go on between the BA and the B.Sc batch, but who cares? The admin and SJA are bound to be neutral to you. You'd get to be a part of every activity on the main campus, added on to the privilege of having more spacious rooms and a better mess on your campus. Just gel up well with your batchmates and the seniors that aren't cocky (quite a few of them are) and you'll be just fine. At the end of the day, you'll be milking the same brand name as the rest of us.

Anyone who forms an impression based on one campus visit is really naive. You think somebody will be able to make out such under-currents through one campus visit? Especially unpleasant admin? Only obvious red flags would be apparent in such a case. You really need to give NUJS more credit than this. They would be shown the welcoming, open, pleasant face of the admin, only to get in and then experience a shock.

As a fellow student who is about to join the bsc course, we have an entire group of bsc seniors. I have talked with them and this is what I understood.

The admin being toxic to the bsc students is flat out lie. In fact, the admin is heavily pushing this concept of bsc llb since they were the ones to introduce it.

About discrimination from other students, I would say ranges from less to almost none, especially for this year. Our seniors in bsc llb did face one or two incidents in the beginning but since then, there have been 2 entire big fests and numerous other activities held at nujs and both bsc and ba have collaborated on the occasions, even participating in various moot court competitions together. In fact, in both of the 2 incidents mentioned above the seniors from 3rd and 4th year helped mediate the issues between both the batches.

Overall I feel the atmosphere is pretty welcoming. Any noticeable bits of "hate" are slowly fading fast, since in the words of a bsc seniors ." both bsc and ba have got proportional amounts of backs in contracts, and since then they have understood we are worth the same" XD