The first allotment lists for each National Law University under the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT 2017) were recently uploaded on the CLAT website.
A total of 2042 students were allotted seats in the eighteen NLUs, with that number to increase once the 252 special categories seats under Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), Foreign Nationals and Residents of Jammu & Kashmir quotas are filled.
Of course, the first lists are expected to undergo a fair bit of chop and change as subsequent merit lists are released. There is also the possibility of these students choosing to opt for non-CLAT colleges like National Law University, Delhi.
However, the first list gives us a rough idea of the gender ratio and the rank cut-offs of the candidates that took the exam. An analysis of these aspects, as well as general trends of the CLAT 2017 takers follows.
Gender Ratio Analysis
Out of 2042 seats, boys claimed 1193, while girls secured 849. To put that in perspective, girls managed to secure around 42% of the total seats. Back in 2015, we had noted that out of the total number of students who wrote the UG exam, 45.4% were girls.
Here is the breakup for each NLU:
| NLU | No. of boys | No. of girls | Gender of highest rank |
| NLSIU | 48 | 27 | Male |
| NALSAR | 71 | 37 | Male |
| NLIU | 52 | 56 | Male |
| WBNUJS | 68 | 35 | Male |
| NLUJ | 62 | 38 | Female |
| HNLU | 87 | 73 | Female |
| GNLU | 104 | 52 | Male |
| RMLNLU | 105 | 55 | Female |
| RGNUL | 97 | 78 | Male |
| CNLU | 81 | 39 | Male |
| NUALS | 32 | 28 | Female |
| NLUO | 90 | 69 | Female |
| NUSRL | 65 | 55 | Female |
| NLUJAA | 42 | 18 | Male |
| DSNLU | 58 | 50 | Male |
| TNNLS | 47 | 57 | Male |
| MNLU Mumbai | 28 | 22 | Male |
| MNLU Nagpur | 56 | 60 | Male |
| TOTAL | 1193 | 849 | 2042 |
The colleges with the lowest gender ratios (boys:girls) are NLIU Bhopal, TNNLS Trichy and MNLU Nagpur, which have more girls than boys. NUALS Kochi, MNLU Mumbai, DSNLU Vizag and NUSRL Ranchi also have decent ratios.
On the other end of the spectrum, GNLU and RMLNLU have highly skewed gender ratios, despite having some form of horizontal reservation for women candidates.
Male candidates seem to have done much better than their female counterparts, only 30 of whom are in the top 100 ranks.
Rank Cut-offs
Here is the list of the first and last rank (for All India Unreserved Category) of each NLU:
| NLU | Highest Rank | Lowest Rank |
| NLSIU | 1 | 59 |
| NALSAR | 26 | 130 |
| NLIU | 106 | 356 |
| WBNUJS | 4 | 213 |
| NLUJ | 37 | 343 |
| HNLU | 371 | 576 |
| GNLU | 195 | 457 |
| RMLNLU | 329 | 627 |
| RGNUL | 119 | 801 |
| CNLU | 110 | 909 |
| NUALS | 258 | 826 |
| NLUO | 565 | 1023 |
| NUSRL | 674 | 1051 |
| NLUJAA | 710 | 1124 |
| DSNLU | 610 | 1151 |
| TNNLS | 240 | 1180 |
| MNLU Mumbai | 280 | 478 |
| MNLU Nagpur | 486 | 1126 |
Preference Trends
As is evident from the above table, students with good ranks have not necessarily chosen the perceptibly higher ranked NLUs. That could be for geographical reasons, mistakes while entering preference, or other reasons.
For instance, four students allotted NLSIU Bangalore preferred joining other NLUs; two opted for NALSAR instead, while the student who secured rank 4 chose NUJS Kolkata as his first preference. Another student chose NLU Jodhpur ahead of NLSIU.
A number of students who could have qualified for NALSAR had chosen other institutes like NLIU Bhopal, CNLU Patna and RGNUL Patiala. From a perusal of the rank lists of each NLU, it is evident that students tended to pick NLU Jodhpur over NLIU Bhopal and GNLU Gandhinagar over HNLU Raipur.
Like last year, students tended to put MNLU Mumbai quite high up on their preference list, despite the University being in its nascent stages. That goes to show how much candidates value location.