The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2019 are out and the first provisional allocation list has been released by the CLAT consortium on its website.

As every year since 2011, we have crunched the preferences of the All India Ranks (AIR) for each law school’s top 30 in the general list, and taken their average AIR rank to create the Super 30 Score.

Unlike cut-offs or topper ranks, the Super 30 much more authoritatively establishes candidates’ order of NLU preferences, without disadvantaging larger colleges.

Overall, this year’s order of preference shows that not everything is completely static in CLAT preferences outside: NLU Jodhpur, in particular, has taken the place of NLIU Bhopal, and NLU Odisha has overtaken RGNUL Patiala and Nuals Kochi this year.

The top three, unchanged

Vis-a-vis last year’s Super 30 analysis the top three are nearly completely unchanged, as showcased by the graph above, below and the full table.

If anything, NLSIU Bangalore has solidified its lead as the most preferred NLU: all 30 CLAT toppers had put down NLSIU as first choice this year, and only one topper in the top 54 All India ranks had chosen not to go to NLSIU (AIR 50 had put Nalsar above NLS in their preferences).

Nalsar Hyderabad sat very comfortably in second place in the rankings, and NUJS Kolkata settled into place of third preference (all three increased their Super 30 scores slightly).

NLIU drops in preference

But then it gets interesting. NLIU Bhopal and NLU Jodhpur were neck-to-neck last year (with NLIU marginally ahead) but this year NLU Jodhpur was decisively ahead of NLIU in terms of CLAT takers’ preferences.

NLU J’s Super 30 score rose from 242 to 191, while NLIU’s dropped from 223 to 245, and one candidate opted for Jodhpur over NUJS; in fact, the top seven candidates at NLU-J and NUJS are very close together in terms of their AIRs (though that gap gets bigger down the list).

GNLU Gandhinagar remained unchanged in 6th place, with its Super 30 rising from 373 to 321; two candidates picked GNLU, although they could have also made it to NLIU or NLU Jodhpur with their AIR.

HNLU Raipur also won back the place it had last year to MNLU Mumbai, with its Super 30 of 427 now slightly ahead of MNLU Mumbai.

Nevertheless, MNLU Mumbai continued performing almost unreasonably well in CLAT takers’ preferences, considering that besides its advantageous location, almost nothing is known about the college, and it has had very little to show the world over the past years. Indeed, anecdotally, reports have reached our ears that there should be serious question marks put next to MNLU Mumbai (maybe some current or former students can chime in about the current status of NLU Mumbai, in the comments).

RMLNLU Lucknow remained in ninth place.

However, NLU Odisha climbed two whole ranks to 10th, ahead of both RGNUL Patiala and Nuals Kochi.

CNLU Patna remained in 13th, while NUSRL Ranchi climbed one into the top 14.

The preference order of the other NLUs is not entirely clear

The order of preference of NLUs 15th to 21st, in preference, is slightly less clear, though the graph above makes clear that MNLU Nagpur is marginally ahead of DSNLU Visakhapatnam, which is ahead of NLUJA Assam and TNNLU Tiruchirappalli.

HPNLU Shimla is generally behind those in preference, though there is a strong contingent of seven candidates who picked Shimla over the other option (the picturesque location may help, or it may have been locals who wanted to stay at home).

MNLU Aurangabad, the third Maharashtra national law school was just ahead of Dharmashastra National Law University, Jabalpur in Madhya Pradehs (MP’s second NLU, which doesn’t seem to have done NLIU Bhopal any favours either).

Full Super 30 Data