How to Tackle Negative Marking in CLAT | Oliveboard

How to tackle negative marking in CLAT? – Do you remember the “Merchant of Venice”? The story where Portia’s father presents three caskets – gold, silver and lead – to her suitors. The first is made of gold and reads, “Who chooseth me shall acquire what many men want.” Most suitors opt for the gleaming gold, oblivious to the fact that everyone before them must have made the same mistake and failed, for Portia would have found a husband long ago if it was that simple. The correct casket is that of lead and warns that the person who chooses it must give and risk everything he has.

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This blog right here is the lead casket in this scene. Why? Because it tells you how to overcome your worst nightmare, it teaches you how to tackle negative marking in CLAT.

Negative Marking in CLAT

Common Law Admission Test, or CLAT, is a centralized national level entrance test for admissions to an integrated (5 years) undergraduate degree in Law (BA LLB, BBA LLB, BSc LLB, etc) in twenty-two National Law Universities (NLU) in India (except NLU Delhi which conducts a separate entrance, AILET). 

The UG-CLAT 2022 shall be a 2-hour test, with 150 multiple-choice questions carrying 1 mark each. The paper shall be divided into 5 sections – English Language, Current Affairs, including General Knowledge, Legal Reasoning, Logical Reasoning and Quantitative Techniques. 

And like in every other competitive examination in India, there shall be a negative marking of 0.25 marks for every wrong answer. This means every 4 wrong answers cost you 1 (one) mark. Also, you get a 0 for every question that goes unmarked or unanswered. Let us break it down for you!

We know that there will be 150 questions. Say you mark 130. Out of the 130 marked, you mark 50 questions incorrectly. So, you have gotten 90 correct and 20 go unanswered.

Final Score = 90 – (50*0.25) = 89.75

This means that the individual statement on the Consortium website – “There shall be negative marking of 0.25 marks for every wrong answer” – may not seem as rattling. However, the final outcome may be disastrous if we do not understand how to tackle negative marking in CLAT. Even 1.25 marks can mean a difference of 50-150 ranks in the final rank list.

Tip#1- Play to your strengths

The very first tip to tackle negative marking in CLAT that you’ll find anywhere is to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Once you understand your SWOT through practice, sectional tests and full-length mock tests, learn to play to your strengths. “How”, you ask? By – 

  1. Attempting the section you’re most confident about first. It will boost you up when you’re able to solve most of the questions of a section while enjoying doing so, would it not?
  2. Another strategy would be to attempt the “Current Affairs including General Knowledge” first. In this section, you either know the answer or you don’t. This in turn means minimum chances for negative marking in CLAT. Another fact is that this section remains the most unpredictable among all 5. Solving this section first can give you an estimate of how much risk you an take in other sections. 
  3. Lastly, you can move on to Quantitative aptitude section. The mathematics part of the CLAT is one that you can be certain of scoring good at should you hold the taste for it. However, you must be thorough with the fundamentals, and even if you aren’t great with numbers, the fact that there are four answers after the question works in your advantage. If you are able to calculate a certain sum and arrive at a proper solution, it will be reflected in the alternatives provided in the paper. That alone should motivate you to maximise your score in this part. I can’t emphasise enough how crucial this area is in raising your overall score.
  4. Next, in the sections that you are least confident about, attempt the easier and familiar questions first. They build your confidence for the difficult ones. 
  5. In the first iteration of the question paper, leave the questions which daunt you. They might end up eating your time, or worse make you earn a negative mark.

Tip#2 – Smart Guesswork 

Some will have you believe that tackling negative marking in CLAT requires you to not make any guesses at all. However, you might not be able to reach the required cutoff for your expected NLU, should you not make any guesses at all. After all, there will be a total of 150 questions. It is a two-sided sword you see! There are some basic rules which you might follow here –

  1. Make no blind guesses – Do not just randomly choose or mark your answer or bubble in the OMR sheet. Attempt the question only if you have at least a faint idea of the essence of the question.
  2. Try to connect the dots – Once you’re certain that you do have a faint knowledge of the question, try recalling the dots from earlier. For example, in a question related to the “floating national park of india”, you might be able to recall the news item on the NHPC project. 
  3. Eliminate options – Once you’ve tried connecting the dots, see if you can eliminate any obvious wrong choices from the options. Attempt to guess the answer if and only if you’re able to eliminate at least 50% of the options. Especially in section like logical reasoning and reading comprehension, you might become heavily confused between 

Tip#3 – Revise your paper

The worst thing you can do to tackle the negative marking in CLAT is to leave your answer sheet unrevised. 

  1. Leave questions for the second round – The nicest thing about the CLAT exam is that you may always leave a really tough question and return to it later. By quitting it when there’s still a significant portion to solve, you’ll save a lot of time by refusing to get irritated by how difficult it appears to be.
  2. Make sure you read all the options in a question before choosing the correct answer – even if you are confident that you have found the correct answer in the first or second option you read, sometimes there may be subtle differences in “wording” in the options.

Tip#4 – Understand the type of questions 

Just like you should know the syllabus like the back of your hand, you should also remember the type of questions asked and the trick of examiners in every section. 

SectionNature of the PassageType of Questions
English Language450 words long Passages derived from contemporary or historically significant fiction and non-fiction writing.Read and comprehend the main point discussed in the passage, as well as any arguments and viewpoints discussed or set out in the passage;Draw inferences and conclusions based on the passage;Summarise the passage;Compare and contrast the different arguments or viewpoints set out in the passage, and,Understand the meaning of various words and phrases used in the passage.
Current Affairs (including GK)450 words long passages derived from news, journalistic sources and other non-fiction writing.Contemporary events of significance from India and the world;Arts and culture;International affairs; andHistorical events of continuing significance.
Legal Reasoning450 word long passages related to fact situations or scenarios involving legal matters, public policy questions or moral philosophical enquiries.Identify and infer the rules and principles set out in the passage;Apply such rules and principles to various fact situations; andUnderstand how changes to the rules or principles may alter their application to various fact situations.
Logical Reasoning300 word long “short” passages to assess your mental ability.Recognize an argument, its premises and conclusions;Read and identify the arguments set out in the passage;Critically analyse patterns of reasoning, and assess how conclusions may depend on particular premises or evidence;Infer what follows from the passage and apply these inferences to new situations;Draw relationships and analogies, identify contradictions and equivalence, and assess the effectiveness of arguments.
Quantitative Techniques“Short” sets of facts or propositions, graphs, or other textual, pictorial or diagrammatic numerical information representations.Derive, infer, and manipulate numerical information set out in such passages, graphs, or other representations; andApply various 10th standard mathematical operations on such information, including from areas such as ratios and proportions, basic algebra, mensuration and statistical estimation

Now adding to these, there are some extra tricks down the examiners sleeves. Some things you could watch out for to ensure that you adequately tackle negative marking for CLAT are –

  1. “Wording of the question” – Pay very close attention to the wording of each question. For e.g. the question ‘Which of the following is the author likely to agree with’ would imply that there is only one option in line with the author’s arguments, while ‘Which of the following is the author likely to most strongly agree with’ would imply that there is more than one option that supports the author’s arguments, but one option in particular provides the strongest support to the author’s arguments.
  2. Simpler Chunks – For questions in legal reasoning section, where you have identified the principle and the facts, try and break down the principle into smaller parts. Only when the facts fit all the parts, should you consider it fulfilled.

These are some of the ways to tackle negative marking in CLAT. Stay tuned to Oliveboard for more tips on law entrances. Ciao!


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