CLAT 2024: Dehradun IAS coaching class teacher secures AIR 11, says ‘be prepared for unexpected’

NEW DELHI: Pawan Kumar Pandey who secured All India Rank (AIR) 11 in the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2024 offers coaching for civil services and law exams. He focused on general knowledge and kept his exam strategy flexible.

Pandey is a Dehradun-based teacher and he runs coaching classes named Oracle IAS for preparation of civil services and law entrance exams. He shared, “I come from a simple middle class family from Bageshwar district in Uttarakhand. I went to school in Lucknow and college in Greater Noida.”

Pandey expected his rank to be in two digits and had posted about it in social media, even before the exam was conducted. However, actually seeing the score card gave a sense of happiness, and validation.

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The change in CLAT 2024 exam pattern motivated the teacher to sit for the exam. “As a teacher, I have to be in touch with such changes so that I can guide my students better. Therefore, I decided to sit for the exam in November,” he said.

Sharing his CLAT 2024 preparation, Pandey said that he studied two to three hours per day for a month for the law exam. Being an engineer, he is good with the mathematics section. “ Additionally, the CLAT exam is based largely on your English reading comprehension. As a voracious reader, I did not have to work hard for that,” Pandey added.

CLAT 2024 preparation, strategy

According to the CLAT 2024 topper, all sections are important for a good score and a student must perform decently in all sections to score good marks.

Pandey focused a lot on general knowledge since that section is unpredictable. He went through sample papers given by the consortium for a basic idea of the paper and then solved a few mock papers made by his team. No specific books were referred for the preparation.

About the legal section, the topper of CLAT 2024 said, “In the CLAT 2024, the legal aptitude section indeed did not require any prior knowledge of law. That is a good thing as you cannot expect class 12 students to be well versed in law for an exam which gives admission to law college! My experience was good with the legal section.”

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“However, I must add one thing here. Even if the consortium does not require any prior knowledge of law, a basic idea of legal system, common laws and the Constitution would immensely help the students. Firstly, in some cases it can save them time while reading the questions where often real world laws are referred to. Secondly, in other exams apart from CLAT, questions may be asked from such knowledge,” he added.

Pandey doesn’t find it much important to read newspapers and reasoned that the GK section in the exam is paragraph-based, one paragraph will have five to six questions on the same topic. He said that in this years’ exam many answers were within the paragraphs and so the topics covered cannot be of momentary significance rather in detail in news and most likely over many days or weeks.

“So strictly speaking, you can ace CLAT GK by reading some monthly magazine. However, reading the newspaper daily is a good habit and will help in other ways. Firstly, your reading speed and comprehension will improve with the newspaper. Secondly, other entrance exams do not have a CLAT pattern. They may ask questions based on smaller events/facts,” Pandey further said.

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As per Pandey, CLAT mock tests are very important for the right strategy and time management. The tests will help students get exposure to a variety of questions and to learn facts.

Pandey found the CLAT 2024 question paper lengthy even after reduction of questions. He explained, “the paper this year contained about 13,000 words, which you have to read, understand and answer within 2 hours. That requires a processing speed of more than 100 words per minute. If you keep around 15 minutes separately for filling in the OMR sheet, that means processing around 125 words per minute. Sometimes, a question will be easy, but sometimes you have to read a question twice or thrice. You have 1 minute per question to attempt and darken the circle.”