CLAT 2018 – Decoding the Compensatory Formula

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After the results were declared for CLAT 2018, we attempted to decode the compensatory formula submitted to the Supreme Court by NUALS; and used for adjusting the marks of candidates who claimed to have lost time in the recently conducted CLAT 2018 exam.

The formula seems to raise a few pertinent questions on the basic assumptions behind this approach.

1.‘ The Notional Time Loss’ 

This seems to have been taken from the system report generated by the company which conducted the exam. If the report was generated from the central server, how was it ensured that it captured the actual situation at the terminal / PC that was being used by the candidates ? For example, the server may record that the exam was started and the timer was running; however, if the questions were not displayed due to local system issues in the terminal / PC, how could the server record the same ?

2. The ‘Answering Efficiency’

This assumes that students would have taken the same amount of time to answer all questions across the exam. However, many students may prefer to answer easier questions first and then go back to the tougher questions. Candidate may take 10 seconds to answer a question that he / she is very familiar with; and take 60 seconds to carefully review and answer a tougher question – and the extra time may lead to higher accuracy.

3.  The  ‘Additional questions that the candidate could have answered ‘

This assumes that the candidate would have attempted all the questions based on the answering efficiency; however, the candidate could have chosen to skip tougher questions, guess the answers for other questions and correctly answer some questions etc. So the number calculated in this column is very subjective.

4. For a few students, the calculations show that they would have actually lost 0.25 marks (due to negative marking) from the marks that they have already scored. What if the student had decided not to attempt any further questions ? Will the revised rank list actually reduce the marks for these students? or will NUALS ignore the negative calculations?

The cascading effect of these calculations may deviate the calculated scores significantly away from what could have been the reality.

The columns in the NUALS report, with our explanations

Sl. No.	(i)	Serial number for reference – there are 4801 students who either registered a grievance or were automatically considered based on the system report or for other reasons.
Roll Number	(ii)	Roll number of the candidate for reference.
Course	(iii)	UG / UG-SAP / PG  – This column is required since the number of questions and the time allowed varies based on this
Total Exam Duration in seconds	(iv)	UG & PG candidates were supposed to get 7200 seconds (2 hours)  and UG-SAP; Specially-abled Candidates were allowed 9600 seconds (2 hours 40 minutes)
Notional Time Loss in seconds	(v)	This data might have been taken from the system reports provided by the company which conducted the exam. This is essentially the difference between the maximum time allowed and the time recorded in the system. The  numbers in this column should factor-in some specific situations, such as where the timer was running, but the  questions were not displayed due to local issues – the server could still record it as normal time utilized, whereas in reality the candidate was not able to see anything on the screen.
Time availed in seconds	(vi) = (iv) – (v)	Maximum time allowed for the exam (Minus) Notional Time loss
Number of Questions attempted	(vii)	The actual number of questions that were attempted by the candidate
No of questions correctly answered	(viii)	For each correct answer, there was 1 mark awarded
No of questions wrongly answered	(ix)	For each wrong answer, there was -0.25 marks (Negative marking). There was no negative marking for unattempted questions.
Original Score	(x)	The actual original score of the candidate, calculated from (viii) and (ix)
Answering Efficiency (Seconds utilized per Question)	(xi) =(vi) / (vii)	The actual time availed by the candidate (divided by) the Number of questions attempted
Additional questions the candidate would have answered  had there been no time loss	(xii) = (v) / (xi)	The notional time lost by the candidate (divided by) Answering efficiency
Max No of Questions that could be attempted		199 for UG and 147 for PG – since some wrong / ambiguous questions were deleted from the exam from the original 200 for UG and 150 for PG
Revised total number of questions answered	(xiii) =(vii) + (xii)	Actual number of questions answered (Plus) Additional questions that the candidate could have attempted if he / she had used the full amount of time
Revised total number of questions answered Limited to maximum available		For a few candidates, who had a higher ‘Answering efficiency’, the number in (xiii) exceeds the actual number of questions in the exam. E.g. The calculation for a particular candidate who had already answered 190 questions, shows that he / she could have answered 29 more questions in the time he / she had lost. Which would mean that he / she could have answered 219 questions if the full 7200 seconds were utilized. However, the maximum number of questions is limited to 199
Revised total number of questions correctly answered	(xiv) =((xiii) x (viii)) / (vii)	This is the number of questions that the candidate ‘could’ have correctly answered, if he / she had got the full amount of time allowed and based on the actual number of correct answered among the questions actually attempted
Revised total number of questions wrongly answered	(xv) =((xiii) *(ix)) / (vii)	This is the number of questions that the candidate ‘could’ have correctly wrongly, if he / she had got the full amount of time allowed and based on the actual number of wrong answers among the questions actually attempted
Revised Score after applying the normalisation formula	(xvi)	Arrived at by calculating 1 mark for the number of questions in (xiv) and deducting 0.25 for the number of questions in (xv)
Difference in score after applying the normalization formula	(xvii)	Difference between original score (x) and the revised score (xvi)

 

Category	Total	UG	UG (Specially abled Persons)	PG
Candidates Applied or Considered	4801	4466	11	324
Candidates for whom Notional Time loss accepted	600	540	1	59
% of candidates considered out of total Applied or Considered	12.50%	12.09%	9.09%	18.21%
Actual Number of candidates for whom marks were changed	525	479	1	45
% of candidates considered (Out of Applied or Considered)	10.94%	10.73%	9.09%	13.89%
% of candidates from Notional Loss accepted – for whom marks were changed	87.50%	88.70%	######	76.27%

 

Change in the Final Marks	Number of UG Candidates for whom the marks changed
-0.25	7
0.25	1
0.50	13
0.75	81
1.00	87
1.25	8
1.50	24
1.75	40
2.00	16
2.25	12
2.50	24
2.75	18
3.00	7
3.25	14
3.50	18
3.75	16
4.00	7
4.25	7
4.50	13
4.75	4
5.00	3
5.25	4
5.50	9
5.75	6
6.00	3
6.25	3
6.50	1
7.00	8
7.25	3
7.75	1
8.00	4
8.25	3
8.50	2
9.00	2
9.25	2
9.75	2
10.25	1
12.75	1
13.75	1
14.00	1
16.00	1
16.75	1

 

Change in the Final Marks	Number of UG – SAP Candidates for whom the marks changed
2.00	1

Disclaimer : This is a unofficial explanation based on our understanding of the partial and incomplete information available to us and is also based on our assumptions. The details in this article are not officially vetted or validated. Candidates should refer to official notifications and details published by the relevant authorities. LawMint and the authors of this article do not make any claims on on the usability, accuracy or validity of the contents of this article.

From 2019 onward, the CLAT exam is being conducted by the CLAT Consortium; which should see an improvement in the way that the exam is conducted.

The source of the data for this analysis is the PDF file published by Bar&Bench.com at https://barandbench.com/breaking-revised-score-clat-2018-published/

Authentic Feedback from previous LawMint users :

I got AIR 21 in CLAT PG. Thank you so much. Your mocks helped me a lot in my preparation 🙂 - Ayushi Jain

I have subscribed to your CLAT PG program and got AIR 36 in this year CLAT PG. I have also secured AIR 54 in AILET PG exam. I would like to thank you. Your mock paper really helps a lot - Shrashank Tripathi

I would like to thank you for the CLAT PG LLM COURSE. Practising mock tests there helped me in getting confidence and hence I was able to get AIR 45 in CLAT PG LLM - Akshay Awasthi

A year back, I relied on the IIT Kharagpur RGSOIPL mock test series by LawMint to prepare for my RGSOIPL entrance test. Few months back, I relied on your UGC NET Law series to prepare for UGC NET. I was the topper of the RGSOIPL entrance, and have cracked JRF in UGC NET. All thanks to LawMint - Anshuman Sahoo

"I got AIR 18 in CLAT PG and General Category rank 28 in AILET PG. I want to thank you for helping me practice well in controlled conditions from any place. It gave me a lot of confidence and I took the tests while travelling too. I also made it to IIT Kharagpur." - Vinodharani

"Lawmint has been of great help to me in securing AIR 25 in AILET PG and AIR 29 in CLAT PG examinations. The subjective and objective approach of the test series kept me up to date with the latest exam pattern." - Bhawna Nanda

"I, Nimmy Saira Zachariah joined you clat test series. I cleared AILET PG with 30th rank. Your test series were of immense help as it gave me clear idea of where my preparations stand thank you once again law mint." - Nimmy S Z

"Hey guys. Where do I start? If I thought that getting AIR 59 in Clat PG was it, then how wrong I was. With Lawmint now I have cracked UGC NET as well." - Joyanta Chakraborty

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