Hey friends, welcome to the world of CLAT. Believe me the journey at no point of time shall make you feel despaired especially now that you have chosen CLATgyan as your companion for the journey. One of the most interesting aspect of your journey is Analytical reasoning. This would set your brain on roller-coster ride but you’ll love it! Blood relations is one such part of the ride.

Blood relations is an interesting chapter and especially when you get a grab of it it’s one thing that can fetch you 100% marks undoubtedly and can also save your time. Initially you might find it a set of really crazy problems driving you mad but the important thing is you should know how to solve them and that’s something we shall be discussing here.

Step 1: breathe easy and relax! Haste does make a waste of your blood relation problems.

Step 2: read the problem carefully and go step by step solving the problem.

Step3: yes, step 2 will make go crazy, but there is a solution to that. Make family chart. You can very easily decide symbols for yourself. For example I had decided the symbol circle for a female member and male square for a male. While making a family tree the initials for a male member were written in a square and female member in a circle. That made things easier for me as it never required an extra effort on my part to either write male or female or refer to question every time. An important tip here is that for every analytical problem that you do you need to focus. Get the details in the form of a chart on your paper rather than frequently referring to the question which may diverge your attention. Also while depicting a husband wife relation you can depict it with an arrow while a sibling relation can be depicted with a simple horizontal line. In case of questions involving multiple generation a parent child relation can very well be depicted with a vertical line (with the child below the parent). This was just an example you can devise your own symbols which you feel you are more at ease with and are more comprehendible to you.

Step 4: once done with making a tree now focus on what is missing and what is asked. Making tree will give you a fair idea of how to go about cracking the puzzle of complex relations and figure out the anwers.

It’s very important for blood relation questions that you get a fair and clear idea of what is given and what is being asked in the question. And drawing a family tree makes it easier for you to get a fair idea of the same. Get it clear in front of you and you’ll very easily get the accurate answer without straining your nerves. Also practice as many questions as you can regularly. Don’t worry if initially you are not able to to get the speed, with more and more practice you’ll be able to make up to the time limit as well.

All the best!
Akshara Shukla.