CLAT Previous Year Cutoffs: How to Read Them
What closing ranks actually mean, why they move every year, and how to use them for your preference list without being misled.
Part of the CLAT 2027 guide
A cutoff in CLAT is a closing rank: the rank of the last candidate admitted to a particular university, in a particular category, in a particular counselling round. It is an outcome, not a threshold set in advance.
That distinction matters more than any table of numbers, so this page explains how to read cutoffs rather than reproducing figures we cannot verify.
Why we are not publishing a cutoff table here
Closing-rank tables are among the most copied content in CLAT preparation, and tables can be misleading when they are inconsistent — different rounds conflated, categories mislabelled, or figures carried over from an earlier year without checking.
Publishing an unverified number on a page a student might use to rank their preferences would be exactly the kind of harm this site is trying to avoid. When we publish cutoffs, each figure will be sourced to the counselling data it came from, and dated.
Where to get them meanwhile: the Consortium’s counselling portal publishes allotment data each cycle, and individual universities publish their own admission data. Those are primary sources. A coaching website’s table is not.
Five things that make cutoffs move
The round. Closing-rank numbers may increase as allotment moves further down the list, but movement is not guaranteed in every round. A “cutoff” from round one and one from round five are different numbers describing different moments.
The category. General, OBC, SC, ST, EWS and PwD all close at different ranks. Comparing across them is meaningless.
State domicile. Several NLUs reserve seats for candidates domiciled in their state, with separate eligibility and allocation rules. If you are eligible for one, your realistic picture is different from the headline figure.
Candidate preferences and the eligible pool, which affect demand for a particular seat. Paper difficulty changes the marks-to-rank relationship; it does not mechanically determine a closing rank. See CLAT score vs rank.
Seat matrix changes. Universities add seats, and new universities join. More seats may allow allocations to extend further, but demand and reservation rules also matter.
How to actually use them
Read them as bands, not lines. If a university closed around a given rank in three recent years, you have a range. Treat the edge of that range as uncertain, not as a guarantee.
Always compare like with like — same category, same domicile status, same round.
Build your preference list wider than you think you need. Follow the current notice for when preferences must be submitted or edited. A list with only ambitious choices risks no allotment; one with only safe choices risks a seat you did not want.
Do not let a past cutoff talk you out of listing a university. Include options you would genuinely accept and follow the current preference rules.
The one thing cutoffs cannot tell you
Whether a university is right for you. Closing rank is a measure of demand, not of teaching quality, faculty, location, fees or what you want from the next five years. It correlates with reputation, and reputation correlates imperfectly with fit.
Where to go next
Sources and scope
References checked on 18 September 2026. Historical counselling information is background only; use the current cycle’s notice for decisions.