AILET Topper Interview 2018: AIR 6, Ishan Bhatnagar shares that confidence & focus is must

Wanting to burst the myth that Freshers do not perform well in All India Law Entrance Exam (AILET), Ishan Swaroop Bhatnagar secured AIR 6 in the exam with a score of 81.5/150. Ishan also shared that National Law University (NLU), Delhi was his first choice when he thought of pursuing a course in law.

Apart from AILET, Ishan appeared for CLAT as well as MHCET Law. He further elaborated that AILET is the toughest among these law entrance exams followed by CLAT and MH-CET was the easiest, this year.

A Science student of Delhi Public School, Bhopal, Ishan secured 96.2% in his CBSE Class 12 results. Talking about his family, Ishan said, “My father is Principal Advisor, Government of MP, while my mother is a Professor of English at the state university”. He also shared that his parents always insisted that he gave his best in everything he did. “They praise effort, not results. They are always there for me yet not hesitant to make me aware of my flaws”, he added.

A very confident Ishan shared his year-long prep strategy, success mantra, future plans and more in a candid interview with Shiksha. Go through the detailed interview below.

Thank you so much! I honestly didn’t expect myself to top anything! Even though I was always within the top ten at my coaching and my friends and family had expectations, I tried not to think too much about results and focused on the task at hand. I had hopes that I’d cross the cut-off somehow, nothing beyond that.

Whatever little I’ve achieved (I’m a midget among giants) has been because of all the people in my life who’ve supported me and helped me grow. My parents, especially my father, have eagerly made innumerable sacrifices for me, year after year. I’m endlessly indebted to my family for all their love and care. I should be glad if I am able to return even an iota of it back to them.

My coaching, Legal Edge, has enriched my preparation and life, my sisters, Aashi and Aru, have been great emotional support. My Aunt and Uncle also have helped me many times and my Grandmother has always been a source of inspiration. My school, DPS Bhopal was very helpful and allowed me to take as many leaves as possible within the CBSE norms. Even my dog gave me company during the long study hours. The Gods have been exceedingly kind.

I would bifurcate my preparation strategy into two components – knowledge and practice.

Knowledge component – this involves questions of GK, vocabulary, formulae of Maths, rules of grammar, legal knowledge etc. This component must be read numerous times, applied to daily circumstances, and committed to memory.

Practice component – this is time based and time is indeed the key to doing well in AILET. This includes questions of logical reasoning, legal reasoning, application of mathematical formulae, reading comprehension passages, parajumbles etc. Timed practice and frequent analysis of mistakes help in acing this component.

My sister, Aashi, suggested that I join Legal Edge (LE). It has been a very satisfying and transformative experience. I cannot thank my mentors at LE enough.

I spoke with a couple of seniors and from their insights, I made a macro plan that I would follow all year. I then sat down with my mentors at LE, especially Harsh Sir and Karan Sir, at various points of time throughout the year to further fine-tune my strategy. Since I had to handle boards as well, the strategy is based on the schedule for various school exams.

By Half Yearly Exams – Finish static Gk, English grammar and vocabulary, Maths – the easier chapters, Analytical Reasoning, Law of Torts and Constitutional Law.

By Preboard 1 – Finish current affairs, revise all that you’ve done, finish Contractual law and IPC, give 20 mock tests.

Between the two preboards – Take lots of timed practice tests, topic-wise. Work on weaker areas.

Till 1 week before the boards – Allocate 50% time to law entrance exams and the other half to CBSE.

During the boards – Focus on the boards, compensate for lack of studying all year round.

After the boards – Get back on track immediately. Revise as much as possible, yet spend about 20% of time on new material.

3-4 days before AILET – Solve one question of each question type, revise all knowledge based topics.

1 day before AILET – Relax. Revise a bit of GK

On the day of the paper – Remember, if you keep calm and are focused, you can do better than people who are smarter than you and who’ve studied harder than you. A calm mind is a rare virtue in this chaotic world.

The key to acing any exam is confidence. As long as I’m confident, I’ll keep working hard because I know I’ll get returns on my effort.

Therefore, I started with my strongest area- English. I’ve been a debator, writer, poet all my life. I channelised all of that knowledge and worked earnestly for two weeks on English. In those weeks, I completed as much of coaching material as I could, in addition to Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis and relevant portions of Wren and Martin.

I then worked on Maths and Static GK. There is a lot of hue and cry about Maths among law aspirants. Maths is the simplest subject of the entire prep- either you know the answer or you don’t. It can never award you negative marks. A small number of questions, done with focus and commitment and analysis of mistakes can help you score well in Maths. I’ve seen friends go from a dismal 2 to a bright and vibrant 9-10 in mocks.

Being an NTSE Scholar, I knew a little bit of static GK. I just referred to a lot of concise GK compilations for static.

For every section, I referred to previous years’ questions and coaching material. In addition to these sources I also referred to:

Maths – M Tyra’s book on Quicker mathematics.

English – CAT past years’ questions, Arun Sharma and Meenakshi upadhyay’s CAT guide, Pearson’s Objective English, Wren and Martin, Word Power Made Easy.

Logical Reasoning – RS Agarwal for analytical reasoning and MK Pandey for Critical Reasoning. I also did past years’ CAT questions initially, to build confidence.

Legal Reasoning – No additional material.

General Knowledge & Current Affairs – Arihant Yearbook, Pratiyogita Darpan Yearbook, Quizzes from GKTODAY, Affairs Cloud etc.

Static GK – NCERT books 8-10, Pearson’s Concise GK, Manohar Pandey’s Yearbook.

I’m a poet, debater, amateur violinist, karate black belt, actor and dreamer. I’ve tried my hand at many things and that has always been a way of taking a break, rejuvenating, and starting afresh.

I appeared for CLAT. AILET, as an exam, is a lot tougher than CLAT because you don’t know what to expect from it. AILET is pretty unpredictable and always a challenge to solve. I was actually smiling during the paper because it was framed so well. The test-takers really know what they’re doing. CLAT is a little more stereotyped.

It has been my first preference for all of class 12. I tried my hand at JEE preparation in class 11. The time I spent at my coaching for JEE, FIITJEE taught me a lot of things. Firstly, it taught me that Engineering wasn’t for me. But it also exposed me to how hard JEE aspirants work. I’ve met some amazing students who work twice as hard as I do. I believe that inspired me to work harder, and has brought me to where I am today.

Outwork your competition. You can beat anyone, regardless of however smart he/she is, if you outwork them.

Believe in yourself and try to enjoy the subjects. Eliminate distractions and focus completely on the task at hand. Never give up, not during prep and definitely not during the paper. I’ll quote my coaching Legal Edge here, “No matter how you played up until now, end it like Dhoni”.

What I love about law is that you can contribute to the way justice is delivered, to the very philosophy of law, Jurisprudence, simply by doing your job. I’m going to be focusing on Constitutional law, Jurisprudence and I also hope to argue cases in larger public interest, in the future.

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