At least two Indian law students have secured this year’s Rhodes Scholarship to study for a fully-funded postgraduate degree at Oxford University.
Final year NLU Delhi student Anupriya Dhonchak and final year University of Delhi, Campus Law Centre student Misbah Reshi have both been selected this year.
Anupriya Dhonchak’s CV includes the UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Communication Summer School on Law, Technology, Democracy, an exchange semester at York University’s law school in 2020 and a Herbert Smith Freehills training contract offer and vacation scheme.
She has worked on action-oriented policy projects concerning rights of survivors of sexual violence, women prisoners and issues of reproductive justice. She has been published by the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law and Justice and recently, co-authored a book chapter with Prof Carys Craig on a feminist reimagination of moral rights in copyright law. Currently, she is a fellow at SpicyIP and a teaching assistant for Intellectual Property at NLUD. She is interested in the intersection of issues of equality law and free speech with intellectual property. Dhonchak has also represented her state in five national championships in badminton.
Mishbah Reshi’s interests include human rights law, international law and criminal law.
She is a philosophy hons graduate from St Stephen’s College and a final year law student at Campus Law Centre, Faculty of Law, University of Delhi.
Reshi is currently the student convener of the Legal Aid Society of her college and has been a contributor to human rights reports on minority rights in India and human rights violations in Kashmir.
Last year GNLU Gandhinagar student Hatim Hussain was the only law student to have bagged the Rhodes, and in 2018 NUJS Kolkata’s Mihika Poddar made the cut.
In 2017, two students from GNLU Gandhinagar and Nagpur University were awarded the prestigious scholarship.
And in 2016, it went to three students from Nuals Kochi, NLSIU Bengaluru and NUJS Kolkata.
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P.S. Nothing against Mishbah, i am sure she worked hard and also made it to right sets of colleges. Just emphasizing the importance of these institutions along with hard work to crack a holistic test posed by Rhodes scholarship...
https://in.linkedin.com/in/anupriya-dhonchak-a63021149
2011: 1 NLSIU
2012: 1 NLSIU, 1 NALSAR
2013: 1 NLSIU, 1 NUJS
2014: 1 NLSIU, 1 NALSAR
2016: 1 NLSIU, 1 NUJS, 1 NUALS
2017: 1 GNLU
2018: 1 NUJS
2019: 1 GNLU
2020: 1 NLUD
Ranking for past 5 years:
Joint 1st: NUJS and GNLU (2 each)
Joint 3rd: NLSIU, NLUD and NUALS joint (1 each)
Ranking for past 10 years:
1st: NLSIU (5)
Joint 2nd: NALSAR, NUJS and GNLU (2 each)
Joint 5th: NLUD and NUALS (1 each)
As of now, the only site with info is Cambridge Gates. It lists one NLSIU alum in 2008 (Surabhi Ranganathan), one NALSAR alum in 2012 (Suhasini Sen) and one NUJS alum in 2019 (Nishant Gokhale).
1. Mrinal Satish: Inlaks for LLM at Yale
2. Sid Narrain: Fulbright for LLM at Harvard.
3. Lawrence Liang: Chevening for LLM at Warwick + Visiting Fulbright at Yale during PhD at JNU
4. Arvind Narrain: Chevening for LLM at Warwick
5. Chitra Narayan: Chevening for LLM at Warwick
6. Arpita Sen: Chevening for LLM from York
7. Naiyya Saggi: Fulbright for Harvard MBA
8. Parul Kumar: Eramsus Mundus for LLM + Humboldt Foundation German Chancellor's Fellowship
9. Anubhuti Agarwal: Chevening for LLM at UCL .
10. Apurva Wankhede: DAAD for LLM in Germany
Lets look at the NLS Rhodies.
1. Lavanya Rajamani teaches at Oxford and the Hague.
2. Sandeep Gopalan has been a dean of law at 3 law schools in Australia.
3. Menaka and 4. Sudhir are well known on the comments section here.
5. Sandeep Sreekumar teaches philosophy at Baruch.
6. Tom Sebastian is in private practice and has acted for many governments in trade law.
7. Nandan Kamath has his own firm in Bangalore and is one of the country's top sports lawyers.
8. Dev Gangjee teaches at Oxford.
9. Rahul Rao teaches at SOAS .
10. Sameer Singh is what everyone really wants to be. After the Rhodes, he started and sold a restaurant, and now plays poker. He also spent some time at BCG.
11. Shyam Balaganesh teaches at Penn Law.
12. Tarun Khaitan, you've already spoken about.
13. Neha Jain teaches at the EUI.
14. Arghya and 15. Bhatia are also well known on the comments section here.
I can go on, but none of these can really be called mediocre by any stretch of imagination.
As for the time period, when it has only been 7 years since all the top 10 NLUs have started producing at least their first batch, then counting for past 20 years for any comparison is foolish.
More importantly, congratulations to both these girls and so sorry to see irrelevant comments ruining the discourse like every time. Kian you seriously need to do something about this unless you want your audience to solely consist of NLU fifth years in a few years.
Respect! There's the difference between NLUs and non-NLUs right there. Non-NLU ones spend free times playing mobile games, but NLU-ites read novels. So NLUs rock even when it comes to time wasting.
[quote]all day in their partner cabins [/quote]
More respect! NLUites become partners!
@All - Beg you, please dont start on faculty now.
To put it in perspective, at NLS - you will learn the Vedas, Upanishads, and Puranas. At Nalsar and NUJS, you will learn the Vedas and a bit of Upanishads and Puranas. At other CLAT affiliated NLUs, you will learn a few shlokhas at the most. At other non CLAT law colleges - alas, all you will learn are the Jataka Tales. At JGLS, apart from the Jataka Tales, you may learn a bit of Hanuman Chalisa.
Hope this helps.
NUJS vs JGLS: NUJS wins in terms of placements, good peer group, campus location (well-connected city area) and fees. NUJS loses in terms of faculty quality, hostel rooms and campus infrastructure, and opportunities for student exchange abroad.
NALSAR vs JGLS: NALSAR wins in terms of placements, good peer group and fees. NALSAR loses in terms of faculty quality and opportunities for student exchange abroad. Other factors are neutral, i.e. NALSAR campus just as remote as JGLS and hostel rooms and campus infra is almost like JGLS.
Did you mean anything else by "not leftist"? For instance, limited governments, free markets, banning Chinese apps for Twitter likes, and so on?
Anything less than nirf $1 is sort of failure for JGLS.
1. Facilities and infrastructure: Jgls has a huge range of library and the library doesn't have the books the student wants they request it and it is brought in within a span of 3/4 days. The campus of jgu is expansive and very well maintained. Yes people, we know that we pay for it.
2. Faculty: from a first hand experience, i beg to differ from most people on the comment section. Jgls has an excellent faculty. There are teachers from harvard some in particular are so good in teaching. We also have guest lectures, not the ones you get mail about, separate due to jindal's global network, we had the NLSIU prof teach us in class too, from which I infer that the teaching styles are not vastly different.
3. Internships & Placements: jindal focuses upon the internships well from the start unlike other colleges, if i m wromg please correct me. It has a very effective internship cell that's kind of provides most people with internships. The placements have been from the round and aboutsame companies which come at NLSIU. Granted the overall placement rate of NLSIU is better, but JGLS can work on it, since it is a relatively new institution.
Disadvantages:
1. Fees: you guessed it, i am going to wrote nothing more. Yes its extremely high and absolutely no excuse for that
2. Peer group: this is a problem since the students are not particularly motivated here. But around about 5/6% children do have higher aims, so if you try surround yourself with a better circle the better.
This is all I felt while studying at JGLS, so before people are at it again, lets be civil and discuss it with right information. Good day:)
Facilities, nobody has raised any issue with. Although it is arguable that if the chance is given to a prospective student, they might choose not to avail of some 'luxuries' if that means paying lesser fees. You mentioned libraries. Most of the top NLUs have access to books and databases that are serving their students well enough for the latter to do everything that they want to. So you can't really claim that you have any advantage in that direction, because the results aren't different.
Faculty: Anecdotal examples won't really suffice to address the concerns raised about faculty. Again, nobody said that JGLS don't have some very good faculty. However, it is also absolutely true that it employs a lot of people as JRAs and SRAs with no teaching experience and those people take on a bulk of the teaching load. Further, the sheer number of students means not everyone gets the marquee faculty. That also has been mentioned by several students earlier.
Internships: Herein you are engaging in hyperbole and exaggeration. If you are claiming that 'most students' get equally good opportunities for internships and jobs as those from top NLUs, that simply isn't accurate. Why don't you cite the stats? How many students apply for internships, whether there is any CGPA criterion like you have for placement (something no other NLU has, and which prevents all the interested students from applying thus keeping the figure down), and how many in any given year, say last year, have secured comparable internships? It would be amply clear to others then. The way JGLS advertises about everything, had their students secured comparable internships and jobs in any year, then they would have publicized it with facts and figures broadcast prime time probably. They aren't doing so, which means the figures can't possibly support such claim.
Finally, if getting comparable graduate outcome to NLUs is your only objective (and that too is yet to be achieved, forget about NLSIU, but even compared to contemporary NLUs like NLUD), then why on earth would anyone spend thrice the money? You need to provide at least three times better outcomes to justify that! That's what logic demands.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZVOsIndOHI[/youtube]
You seem to think that anyone who does law should put their head down and treat a Big Law job as some kind of holy grail. This may surprise you, but people have different priorities in life.
They may already be rich , and a Big Law job would be a *step down* for them. Not an option for most people, but worth remembering that rich people think differently.
They may love law in an intellectual, nerdy way, and may want to continue with it. Again, it's remarkably arrogant of you to tell them "Don't eat Chinese, I'm going to force you to eat truffled caviar".
They may recognize their privilege, and decide to do something with it, instead of fattening their bank balances. It's not that hard, you know, not chasing the bright, shiny dollar signs?
In a few years, everyone you know will have money. It really doesn't mean much at some stage. Do you want to be a wealthy nobody? Or do you want the respect of your peers? Do you want to be somebody who people still talk about 10 or 20 years after they graduated?
One is that anyone whose first attack is on your grammar / accent / spelling is typically already dead in the water and throwing up these lame arguments to buy time and defend the indefensible.
I only request you to read my post once again. My point is that students should pursue what they like (including charitable causes if it truly interests them). However and this is my experience, most of these Rhodes "scholars" are simply students who calculate ahead on how to prep up a CV and throw in the spices and masala till they get that acceptance letter. Once done with BCL only a small number actually pursue their professed interest in any meaningful way. The rest get back to the usual villains such as big law, small law, MNCs, etc. etc. Dont take my word for it. Just google the last fifteen years worth of these scholarship awardees and see where they are today, after all the cringe worthy puff-pieces they wrote to get a seat at oxford.
That is why I fault these foolish scholarships for spurning an unhealthy and unnatural desire amongst law students to mould themselves in a particular way. Very similar to the Barbiedoll craze that made young women insecure with their bodies and take extreme measures to get that hourglass figure.
When will people learn that biglaw or NGO, what matters is happiness in life and not these silly labels.
On that note I yield to allow you to continue your grammar nazi tirade.
It is extremely toxic to idolise people solely based on their achievements and call them "super human" as if your value is based in how many different things you can fit into your CV. If there are genuinely any law school kids reading these posts and comments, there is more to life than these scholars and scholarships. Do whatever you want and break this cycle of glorifying achievements like these.
My argument is not to do away with hard work but to recognise that hard work doesn't always bear the same fruit for people because of factors out of our hands.
than 2 even from harvard
My friend in the UK has shared the following names of NALSAR graduates who have been accepted into the B.C.L. this year: Rahul Mohanty (2017), Srimukundan Rajaram (2017), Pranahita Srinivas (2017), Karan Gupta (2018), Abhijeet Rawaley (2020), Aishwarya Birla (2020), Priyamvada Shivaji (2020).
Please do corroborate this with your friends who might be at Oxford or NALSAR. The person who shared this information is a well-regarded academic.
It is great to learn that graduates from NUJS and Symbiosis are also opting for higher studies at the top universities. There are talented law students in all corners of our country, so we must nurture them and provide the best available opportunities.