RutSum

CLAT 2008 Results

This post was guest blogged by Sneezy Melon of The Goofy Express.

The Common Law Admission Test results were released today, two days after the scheduled date 17th May 2008. The website attributed the delay to a “technical problem” for which all the Vice Chancellors held a meeting yesterday. The test was held for the first time this year, resulting from the Memorandum of Understanding signed between all the seven National Law Schools on 23rd November 2007. In its first run itself, the test saw a record 10,773 aspirants. The website itself boasts of an odd 2.5 lakh pageviews.

There was no negative marking in the test and the questionwise breakup was as follows-

1. English - 40 marks
2. General Knowledge - 50 marks
3. Mathematics - 20 marks
4. Legal Aptitude - 40 marks
5. Logical Reasoning - 50 marks.

General Knowledge was, inarguably, the toughest part of the test. Mathematics and English were undoubtedly on the easier side. Logical Reasoning required only a bit of simple thinking. Legal Aptitude involved basic deduction analysis.

The law schools taking part in the CLAT are-

1. National Law School of India University (NLSIU) (Bangalore)
2. NALSAR University of Law (Hyderabad)
3. National Law Institute University (Bhopal)
4. The West Bengal National IUniversity of Juridical Sciences (NUJS)
5. National Law University (Jodhpur)
6. Hidayatullah National Law University (Raipur)
7. Gujarat National Law University (GNLU)

Three more law universities will also be using the CLAT results for admission for the academic year 2008-09, namely-

1. Chanakya National Law University (Patna)
2. Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University (Lucknow)
3. Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law (Patiala)

The Rank List for the CLAT 2008 can be downloaded here- CLAT Rank List

CBSE Board Exams 2008 Result Dates Announced

This post was guest blogged by Sneezy Melon of The Goofy Express.

The Central Board Of Secondary Education (CBSE) today publically announced the dates for the CBSE Board Examination results for Class XII. Here’s what the official website says-

Class XII Exam Results 2008 - To be Announced on 21st May 2008 at 08:00 Hrs. IST
( Chennai, Ajmer and Panchkula regions )

Class XII Exam Results 2008 - To be Announced on 23rd May 2008 at 08:00 Hrs. IST
( Delhi, Guwahati and Allahabad regions )

The dates for Class X Board Exams are yet to be released. Keep reading this space for more updates.

More here - CBSE 2008 Results.

You Know It’s A Government Website When..

This post was guest blogged by Sneezy Melon of The Goofy Express.

1) Different browsers mean different displays.

2) None of the displays match the way it was supposed to be.

3) Internet Explorer 5.5 is “recommended”.

4) Same set of username and password results differently on different occasions.

5) Flash is used more than HTML.

6) Internet finally makes your head all dizzy.

I recently happened to come across one such website. It was designed for the Employee Information System of the Delhi Governent. Not-so-surprisingly, the title tags said otherwise. The stupidity didn’t begin here, actually. The password for login (a 3-letter string) was the same as the username. Both were printed on thousands of notices which were circulated across all the employee offices in Delhi. Yet, a “highly-secure database” was insisted upon. I don’t see how that works.

As expected, the website worked neither on Opera Kestrel (9.50 Beta 2), Opera 9.27, Mozilla Firefox 3 (Beta 4,5), Mozilla Firefox 2, Apple Safari or Konqueror. The only hope left was the world’s best browser of all time. Yes, I’m talking about your, mine and Microsoft’s favorite (*drum roll*) Internet Explorer! Now working on Intenet Explorer and that too on Windows would have been no better than sleeping with two ugly witches.

So, some Googling and a few minutes later, I had downloaded the IES4linux project and was already running it. I decided to start with the latest stable version and step down one-by-one (which I was pretty sure I would have to). Sadly, the beta feature (in ies4linux) didn’t work as the Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Setup file was “corrupted”. 6.0 got installed easily. 6.0 gave up easily. 5.5 was no better. And 5.0 did not get install altogether. Again, the file was “corrupted”.

Finally, 48 hours, lots of head-banging and around a fifty thousand curses later, I’m still stuck. And I know I may remain stuck till eternity, unless I die about 20 years from now due to food-poisoning. Let’s hope the dog pees in my porridge!

CBSE 2008 Results

Its the later half of May, and its time for lakhs of students of 10th and 12th standard to start worrying about how they would fare in the soon-to-be-announced CBSE results. The official result website of CBSE currently doesn’t list any official date, but we all know that the result is to be expected soon; first for XIIth class, then Xth.

Talking about the CBSE website, as a usual feature they have their ‘register by email‘ service which allows you to register your roll number beforehand with CBSE, and they promise to send you your result on time if their website is down due to heavy traffic (which is usually the case).

Now those people who have used this service would know that their emails reach them a day or two late, usually when everything is over, people (read relatives) have called you asking about your result, and you are either partying - or sulking alone in the dark on a rocking chair. The reason for this delay in delivery is that usually spammers registered thousands of fake email ids for result delivery on the CBSE website, and this effect coupled with the load on their server resulted in the time delay.

NIC (National Informatics Centre), the Indian government’s biggest IT organisation, is responsible for maintaining this result website. What surprises me is that they never noticed this problem for so many years. This year, however, they seem to have got a sane person on their crew, who asked them to add the simplest way to combat spam and flooding to their website - CAPTCHA.

What does this mean to you? Obviously, you can expect to get your results earlier than usual this time.

UPDATE: CBSE has announced the dates for the CBSE 2008 Board Examination results for Class XII. Read more here- CBSE Board Exams 2008 Dates Announced

BITSAT 2008 Questions & Preparation

This post was guest blogged by Sneezy Melon of The Goofy Express.

BITSAT 2008 is an important examination for engineering aspirants from all over India. Arguably, BITS Pilani is perhaps even the most prestigious institute for engineering studies in the country after the IITs. The admission is purely merit based and candidates are required to appear for the BITSAT Online Tests which are conducted over a series of days.

I took the BITSAT today and posted, earlier, about my experience and expected cutoff. This information might help all those who have selected dates later than 10th May in preparing for this important examination.

Let’s start from the basics. As aforesaid, the question paper consisted of four parts-

Part I : Physics (40 Questions)
Part II : Chemistry (40 Questions)
Part III : English Proficiency and Logical Reasoning (25 Questions)
Part IV : Mathematics / Biology (45 Questions)

Mathematics was for people with PCM in 10+2 and Biology was for people with PCB in 10+2.

Total Questions: 150

Total Time: 180 minutes (3 hours)

Bonus Questions: 12

Positive Marking : +3
Negative Marking: -1

There were 12 bonus questions available for all those who had attempted all 150 questions in the alloted time. The key was to answer questions with maximum speed and accuracy.

English Proficiency and Logical Reasoning
I suggest you start with Part III as it requires no calculations and not much thinking. All the 25 questions get easily answered in little time on applying simple logic. It also boosts your speed and leaves more time to be spent on other sections, which are tougher. I finished Part III in about 12 minutes.

Mathematics
After that you can move on to any other section as it won’t make much difference. However, attempting Mathematics next might prove to be a little advantageous as it seemed a bit on the easier side to me. Questions in Mathematics were mainly focussed on two topics, namely-

Functions
Integral Calculus

So be sure to practice as many questions as you can from these chapters. Get your basic concepts as clear as possible and do IIT level problems from good books like Tata Mc-Graw Hill for best performance.

Physics
Physics and Chemistry were more or less same in the difficulty level. Questions in Physics were also mainly focussed on two topics-

Electromagnetism (Including Static/Current Electriciy, Magnetism, Induction)
Rotation

I have noticed that almost all entrance examinations emphasize on rotation and mechanics in general. There were a few tough questions from thermodynamics also. I recommend you stick to HC Verma and/or Halliday Resnick Walker for physics preparation. Do as many numericals as you can and skip trivial topics and definitions as not knowing them will not hurt you.

Chemistry
Main topics covered in the Chemistry part of BITSAT 2008 were-

Inorganic Chemistry (s,p block)
Isomerism

I have specified isomerism in particular as about 5 out of the 40 questions were out of this topic only. Questions from physical chemistry were rare, but present. Pearson’s Guide to Objective Chemistry is the best book I have yet found for engineering related chemistry studies. There are other books as well, but concepts in them are usually overstated, understated or garbled up.

Important preparation material for BITSAT 2008 can also be purchased for Rs 600 from BitsatRace.Com

If you want to get a good rank in BITSAT 2008, study seriously and with good concentration. Stay off the internet, television, telephone and blogging as much as you can.

In the examination, dont try to guess answers as negative marking might land you a score lesser than what you deserve. Think clearly and don’t cheat as invigilation is very strict.

Best of Luck!