An anonymous and concerned CLAT aspirant’s father rails against the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2015, which, as last year, he argues was of a disturbingly low quality.
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At least 6 answers in CLAT key are almost certainly wrong: CLAT ‘expert committee’ to examine test again, more delays expected
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Download undergraduate test key from here
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CLAT publishes answer keys after writ, but errors and more alleged
It had a number of wrong questions, wrong answers, printing errors, and grammatical and spelling errors, even if we don’t argue about the general low quality of this copy-paste exercise. Even copy-paste requires careful verification of every single word that one copies from somewhere.
Irreversible Damage
When a few questions are wrong in a national-level competitive exam, the situation cannot simply be corrected by awarding bonus marks for each wrong question to all the examinees.
Some of the deserving candidates would get unnerved or frustrated while attempting the wrong questions. It would impact their overall exam performance, and they would lose out in the process.
Lack of Transparency
Complete non-transparency in any system naturally brings about these kinds of disasters because those in command believe they are not accountable, they are beyond questioning, and therefore a very casual attitude, laxity, and worst of all, a sense of arrogance sets in.
Non-transparency is the central characteristic of dictatorships, not of democratic systems.
Who exactly sets the CLAT question paper? Who revises or verifies or approves it after it has been set? Who solves the questions actually to determine their accurate answers before copy-pasting from commercial books, websites, and printed materials of coaching institutes? Is there any individual or group or committee on whom the accountability can be pinned down?
The answer is simply “No.” There is a complete lack of accountability in a non-transparent system, which gives rise to such hopeless eventualities that play havoc with the careers of children.
Unprofessional Questions
Consider this sample from CLAT 2015, which is merely a representative of the entire question paper: “Name the largest e-commerce company in the world.”
Obviously, the question has been copy-pasted from some low-quality book or magazine. The question is unqualified per se.
The appropriate question could be: “Name the largest e-commerce company by annual sales revenue in 2014,” or “Name the largest e-commerce company by market capitalization in 2014,” or “Name the largest e-commerce company by the number of employees in 2014.”
Business Standard reported on September 21, 2014 that Alibaba’s market cap exceeded that of Amazon and eBay combined. However, the CLAT 2015 Answer Key declares, quite casually, “Amazon is the largest e-commerce company in the world.”
Cavalier Attitude
This kind of recklessness happens in a non-transparent system when the paper-setter knows he is beyond questioning, and he is only next to the Almighty.
The entire CLAT 2015 question paper reflects such cavalier attitude. A question paper will obviously become completely unbalanced when you copy-paste rampantly without applying any thought, and without tempering it with world-class professionalism, knowledge and experience.
The Burden of Responsibility
A good question paper must perform a careful balancing act in the quality and nature of its questions in order to select the best talent.
A national-level question paper is all-powerful. It decides the future of a generation. And as Spiderman says, great power comes with great responsibility.
The hand of the paper-setter must tremble when he lifts the pen to select a question. He must know the enormous burden of a nation’s future that his pen carries.
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Apurva Ranjan Shukla
NLSIU
Scrap the crappy CLAT. Have a MCQ test requiring a general understanding of the socio-political world around them, with a sprinkling of basic level queries in economy with which we interact on everyday basis. Then shortlist and send out invites on a university specific basis. Sit them down in groups for a GD on a relevant topic, and then require all NLU's to take 2/3/4 people (if strength is 80) from each state in country to provide for diversity of lived experience in the next five years.
This hyper instrumental-rationalist, objectivism thrusted manner of conducting exams and picking students creates a dull pool of jacks and jills that end up (five years down the line) joining the exact same careers that the group they replaces in a law school.
31
36?
38?
45
59
64
69
76
79
82
118
122
125
129
131
136
148
149
However, question and answers of 31, 36, 59, 69, 79, 122, 129, 131 are incorrect and need to be corrected. . .
The top NLU's should question RMNLU and seek an intervention from Ministry of HRD,as it is matter of career of the students.
I strongly feel that it should be held by some responsible institute every year rather than passing the baton from one institute to another.
Why IIT JEE's don't face these problems? Why CAT examination never has such issues and why worldwide held GRE doesn't get affected by such issues even though it is been running for so many years?
The people responsible should be removed from the insitutes for playing with the emotions of these any students? They should have been much more responsible than setting up just an expert committee for finding out the issues in the debacle caused.
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