I’ve discussed about this principle on my YouTube video. But if you haven’t seen the video, here’s a detailed explanation for you.
So what is Pareto Principle?
It says that ‘20% of inputs are responsible for 80% of the results’. And believe me, this rule is applicable at every juncture of your life.
Don’t take it as always being 80-20, sometimes it can be 70-30 or even 90-10 depending on the context. A famous book is also written on this principle, you can know more about it by clicking here.
The basic idea is, ‘A large part of the result depends upon minority of the inputs’. You’ll understand it better through the examples ahead.
Let’s understand through an example of ‘car crashes’.
This article talks about car crashes and mentions how 69% of accidents happen within 10 mile radius of the home.
So we can say that, ‘if a person drives really carefully within 10 miles of his home, he has a good chance of avoiding car crashes’.
In the same way, from my personal experiences, I can claim that 20% decisions/events in our lives actually decide how our lives would turn out.
For example, decisions such as which subject you choose after 10th, whom do you marry, and so on.
These decisions decide whether we live a successful life or not.
I hope I’m making sense.
Applying the 80/20 rule to CLAT exam
Now let’s apply this rule to exams such as CLAT.
As we know that CLAT is a passage based exam, it’s undeniable that having ‘good reading skills’ is very important.
For example- If you have good reading skills, you would be able to solve comprehensions and passages with speed and accuracy in English, Critical Reasoning & also Legal section.
80% of your job would be done as in CLAT you have to read a lot of big passages. So this means, having ‘good reading skills’ comes among the 20% of most important things in CLAT exam.
This is how you should prepare for CLAT
Now as you’ve understood the importance of ‘reading’ in CLAT, your significant time should be spent on reading long passages, the Hindu articles, solving questions from book such as ‘Arun Sharma’ & so on.
This doesn’t mean that you should not focus on other things; NO, it’s just that your main focus should be on getting very comfortable with reading and making good sense of long comprehensions & passages.
What type of questions would come under 80/20 rule?
So now it’s clear that ‘good reading habit’ comes under 80/20 rule. We can say it in another way, that it comes among the ‘20% most important things’ while preparing for exams such as CLAT.
Now let’s use this rule to identify the other important sections in CLAT.
Here I mean, we would look into those sections that constitute a major part of the question paper.
We would use the CLAT 2021 paper for this.
If you closely analyze the English section, you would realize that more than 10 questions are based on ‘Vocabs’.
In the same way, more than 3 passages in Legal Reasoning were on Indian Contract Act.
In Logical Reasoning section, maximum questions were ‘central idea of passage’, or ‘strengthening arguments/weakening arguments’ types.
This means, if you study the above mentioned sections very carefully, you have high chances of being among the toppers, as most questions are asked from these sections (read CLAT past year paper to find other topics too)
But the thing is, preparing for these sections isn’t easy. You would need a lot of practice to master ‘Vocab’.
You would also need to practice a lot to find the proper strategy to solve critical reasoning questions.
So, what should you do?
The answer is – Before giving time to unimportant topics, make sure you become good in important topics first.
Conclusion
To conclude, all I have to say is – ‘First become good in important topics’ & then take care of other topics that are less important for exams.
For English– Be good in Vocab & passage reading skills
Logical Reasoning– Solve more & more questions of critical reasoning & then identify the pattern through which these questions can be solved. From my experience, I can say that you become good in critical reasoning questions only after solving 100s of questions. There is no easy way out.
Law– Complete important topics such as Law of Contract, Fundamental rights & then solve many questions.
GK– Current GK & current topics that may some ‘past knowledge’
Maths– Topics that most used in DI format such as Ratio, Profit & Loss, Percentage.
Finally, remember that this is just my suggestion & something that works for many aspirants in exams such as CLAT, UPSC & so on. Apart from this, use your own strategies too for getting the best results!
All the best!