What are NLUs (National Law Universities)? How are these Different from Other Law Schools?

Among the top NLUs that take CLAT scores into account are NLIU Bhopal, NLSIU Bengaluru, and NALSAR Hyderabad. In addition to NLUs, a large number of privately funded law schools also accept CLAT results for admission.  This means if you manage to secure even a decent rank or marks in the CLAT exam, you have a chance of getting admission to one of these colleges. Even among the participating NLUs, there is great diversity as far as seat intake and reservation criteria are concerned. Only recently,  RGNUL has updated its seat matrix and introduced the EWS category for UG and PG. Further, a New category – Backward Category of Punjab has been added for UG. 

Candidates must note that all participating institutes in CLAT will release a separate category-specific cutoffs for every course they offer. The CLAT Cutoff 2025 mentions the ranks of the candidates who are eligible for admission to the college. However, it does not releases the marks scored by the candidates. But, the higher the score, the better is the rank. 

CLAT cut-off 2025 will depend on various factors such as the total number of candidates, seat intake, the difficulty level of the exam, the category of the aspirant, and the performance of the candidate. In case the difficulty level of the exam is high then the cut-off marks and score are expected to go down 

The key differences between CLAT and AILET are the following:

Colleges Accepting Scores:

• CLAT: Accepted by 22 National Law Universities (NLUs) and 65 other participating institutions across India for undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) law programmes.
• AILET: Only accepted by National Law University Delhi (NLU Delhi) for its UG and PG law programs. NLU Meghalaya conducts its own separate entrance exam.

Exam Pattern and Syllabus:

CLAT:

• 5 sections: Legal reasoning, Logical reasoning, Quantitative techniques, English language comprehension, and Current affairs with General Knowledge.
• Objective type Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) for both UG and PG exams.

AILET:

• 3 sections: Legal reasoning, Legal aptitude, and English language.
• Objective type MCQs for the UG exam, while the PG exam has both MCQs and descriptive questions.
• No Quantitative techniques section unlike CLAT.
• General Knowledge (GK) questions are asked in statement-based format compared to the passage-based format in CLAT.

Difficulty Level:

• CLAT: Generally considered slightly easier due to a more predictable pattern and syllabus.
• AILET: Often perceived as more challenging due to its unpredictable nature and the inclusion of descriptive questions in the PG exam.

Other Factors:

• Exam Dates: CLAT and AILET are typically conducted on separate dates, usually in May and June respectively.
• Application Process: Both exams have separate application processes through their respective websites.

AILET and CLAT both are the two most sought-after law entrance exams of the country. AILET stands for All India Law Entrance Test and CLAT stands for Common Law Admission Test. While both tests serve the law aspirants, there are a few factors that make them different from each other. I think CLAT is way ahead in comparison to AILET. CLAT offers admission to 22 National Universities that participate in this test. On the other hand, AILET has just one participating institute, and that is the National Law University (NLU), Delhi. On the basis of level of competition, in CLAT, more than 50,000 students appear for nearly 4000 seats in all the national law  universities under it. This means that the success rate in CLAT revolves around 6%. On the other hand, AILET has 110 seats under it (for all the courses combined), and more than 20,000 students appear for this test. Which means the success rate is around 0.006%. This clearly indicates that the level of competition is huge for AILET. So, if you are appearing for both the exams, you are 1000 times more likely to get a seat under CLAT when compared to AILET.

Even though NLU Delhi is a National Law University but it is not a part of the Consortium of NLUs, which raises the obvious question 'how is it different than other NLUs? . All the NLUs in India have been granted the status by the University Grants Commission (UGC). Thus, there is no major difference in the courses offered at NLU Delhi as compared to the other National Law Universities. Moreover, NLU Delhi is built on the five-year integrated law degree model as proposed and implemented by the Bar Council of India (BCI). 

Candidates must note that all participating institutes in CLAT will release a separate category-specific cutoffs for every course they offer. The CLAT Cutoff 2025 mentions the ranks of the candidates who are eligible for admission to the college. However, it does not releases the marks scored by the candidates. But, the higher the score, the better is the rank. 

CLAT cut-off 2025 will depend on various factors such as the total number of candidates, seat intake, the difficulty level of the exam, the category of the aspirant, and the performance of the candidate. In case the difficulty level of the exam is high then the cut-off marks and score are expected to go down.