CLAT 2020 to be held on May 10; exam pattern to undergo major changes, including fewer questions

New Delhi, November 22: The Consortium of NLU has announced that CLAT 2020 will be conducted on May 10, 2020. The exam notification will be made available in the last week of December 2019, while application forms will be open in online mode from January 1 onward. The details were announced during a press conference held on November 21. However, the major talking point was the decision to make structural changes to the exam pattern of the national-level exam, which is the gateway to all the NLUs in the country, barring NLU Delhi.

Changes made to CLAT UG exam pattern:

Fewer number of questions

Last year the CLAT question paper included 200 MCQs, but from the new session the number of questions will be 120-150. Explaining the rationale behind the move, President of the Consortium, Prof. Faizan Mustafa said, “asking students to answer 200 questions in 120 minutes is not right as it puts students under a lot of mental stress.”

Comprehension-based questions

Another change that CLAT aspirants have to contend with is the inclusion of comprehension-based questions, which will be from Quantitative Techniques, English, Current Affairs, Deductive Reasoning and Logical Reasoning sections. Explaining the move, Prof. Faizan said that it will enable the NLUs to attract “better students to National Law Universities who have competence in reading texts and demonstrate skills in inferential reasoning.”

Just like the UG exam, the PG exam too will now have comprehension-based questions. The descriptive section, however, will remain the same. Another interesting development for PG exam could be introduction of cutoff marks, as mentioned in the press release.

Some features remain untouched

The duration of the exam will be 2 hours like earlier, and so will be the mode of the exam (offline).

The full details of the exam pattern will be notified by the consortium in the last week of December.

In related news….

The Consortium pledged to undertake Faculty Development Programmes across the NLUs, and come up with scholarship schemes and fee concessions for needy students.