Your Guide to Clearing DU LLB Entrance -2018 Without Coaching-2 - The Challenges

Many students appearing in the DU LLB Entrance examination may be veterans at competitive examinations. Some students may have repeatedly given (and cleared) tough exams such as JEE, AIEEE, AIPMT, UPSC Civil Services Exams, State PSC exams, SSC CGL, Bank PO etc.

However, it has been observed that a vast majority of the test takers are fresh graduates from commerce and arts streams, who may have never taken a national level competitive exam of this nature before. There are certain factors that set this exam apart from , say, a board examination of CBSE or the State Boards.

Before we move to the challenges, it is to be noted that the exam is of 400 marks. There are 100 questions. A correct answer will fetch you 4 marks. An incorrect answer will cost you 1 mark. If you do not attempt a question, you will neither gain nor lose any marks.  

Now, let us examine some challenges the exam throws up.

Firstly, the exam is objective type. This means you either tick the correct answer or you do not. There is no scope for getting half a mark for "attempt" or one mark for correct reasoning but wrong answer. Thus, accuracy is the need of the hour. Accuracy calls for self confidence. Self confidence can only come from repeatedly practicing questions and being secure in the knowledge that one has covered the syllabus. The good news is that the resources you have to refer to are very limited and therefore it is simpler to cover the whole syllabus.

Secondly, there is negative marking.  This means that guess work or "Tukkabaazi" is more likely to get you penalized rather than rewarded. The competition is intense. One mark may be all that causes your to get your second preffered centre rather than the first. Or worse, one mark may mean the difference between getting selected or being rejected. The good news is that there is always scope for "educated" guess work. This means that you can arrive at the correct answer by the process of elimination or correlation. 

Thirdly, the competition is intense. This is because all sorts of people take this exam. Some of them have been preparing for years for Public Services examinations and have the knack of clearing objective type exams. This means that the margin for error is restricted. Just because your preparation is insufficient, does not mean that everybody else is in the same boat. The good news here is that no matter how much of a genius somebody else is, all that matters is the limited syllabus you are required to cover. It is here that a fresh graduate with no previous competitive exam experience can narrow the difference between herself and somebody who has appeared four times in the UPSC Civil Services interview!

Keeping these factors in mind is crucial to channelizing and focussing your preparations. 

Over the next few posts, I will come back to these issues again and again while addressing other aspects of the exam.

In case there is any specific issue you want me to address, please comment on Facebook.

All the best!

VIVEK PRASAD

Campus Law Centre, Faculty of Law, University of Delhi

AIR 18 and 327 marks out of 400 in DU LLB Entrance examination 2017.