CLAT 2021 in Numbers: UG Analysis

In 2008, the first CLAT exam was conducted by NLSIU with a total of 7 national law universities participating. 10,773 students appeared for this exam. 

Fast forward to 2021, 22 NLUs offer admission to their various law programs through this exam. The number of candidates appearing for this exam has also risen to over 70,000. Of this, 53,502 candidates appeared for the UG exam. 

With so many interesting facts and figures around the exam, we decided to do some data crunching of our own. Based on the consolidated merit list released by the Consortium of National Law Universities, here are some numbers. The UG exam carries a maximum score of 150 marks. In 2021, the maximum possible score was 149 since question number 143 was dropped. 

As per our analysis, the majority of the individuals scored below average, but the overall performance has bettered since last year. 

Here’s where it gets interesting. In 2020, the highest marks scored by a candidate were 127.25. However, it has dropped to 125.5 this year. But coincidentally, the difference between Rank 1 and Ranks 2 and 3 remains really huge (of 7-8.5 marks), similar to that of last year. 

The marginally lower marks are being attributed to the lengthy paper and the changed pattern of the General Knowledge section of the CLAT exam.

While the highest score may have dropped marginally, the number of students scoring more than 100 marks has increased dramatically. In 2020, only 19 candidates scored 100 or more in the CLAT exam. But this year, the number has risen to a staggering 157 which indicates a much higher competition. This is despite complaints made by the students about the exam being incredibly difficult. It seems that the exam was lengthy rather than difficult. 

Moving towards the lower end of the table, a total of 38 candidates scored zero marks. This is much lower than the number of 174 last year. However, the number of candidates scoring in the negative has risen from 270 to 319. The lowest score was -8.75, marginally better than the -9.5 scored last year. 

Only 2,015 candidates, which is about 3.76% of the total candidates, were able to score more than 50% marks, i.e. 74.5. 

The average score this year remains a dismal 30.16, or rounded off to 30 which is only 20.13% of the total score. Of the 53502 candidates who appeared, only 40%, i.e., 21,701 candidates scored above the average. This is lower than the average score of 32.7 in 2020. 

Here are some insights:

As it can be seen from the above mentioned data, the majority of the candidates scored below the average score of 30.5. This points towards the difficulty level of the exam which was highly reading intensive. Since only 1026 objections were received in the UG exam, it certainly stands to reason that most students were more or less satisfied with the result.