CAT Score Vs Percentile. Exam Marks vs Percentiles

CAT Score vs Percentile:  CAT (Common Admission Test) Exam was held on Nov 30th. Around 2.5 lakh students appear for the management entrance exam. CAT Exam slot 1 is concluded and the paper is rated as “moderate” in terms of difficulty level. 

IIM Admission. MBA Placement & SIP Report

CAT 2025 has concluded, bringing immediate negative reactions from the student community and experts alike. The overall paper structure remained consistent with the previous year, maintaining the familiarity of the exam format. However, the difficulty level has seen a tangible spike, particularly in the DILR and Quantitative Aptitude sections.

Find weight-age given to CAT Scores by the IIMs.

CAT Score Vs Percentile Conversion

1. Raw Score in CAT: Calculation of your raw score in CAT on the basis of the answer sheet provided by CAT portal
2. Raw score to Scaled score: Scores are normalised across 3 slots.
3. CAT Scaled score to Percentile score: Percentile is given depending upon the number of test takers across the CAT exam slots.

CAT score card contains two types of scores – CAT Scaled Score and CAT percentile score. The exact marks obtained in CAT exam is not given in the CAT score card. Only your Scaled CAT score, Percentile – overall and section wise is displayed on the CAT score card.

CAT 2025 (Slots 1 , 2 & 3 ) Decoded

Target B-Schools as per percentile in CAT 2025 Exam

Raw Score for 99%:

If we look at the trend in the last few years, you will see that an overall 99th percentile was achieved by attempting roughly 45 to 50% of the paper correctly to reach the top 1 percent. But let’s not overlook the fact that acing the CAT exam also requires you to clear the sectional cut-offs. As per Career launcher

Calculation of scaled score of a candidate:

Following steps are followed to calculate the scaled score of a candidate in each of the three sections, i.e. VARC, DILR and QA in CAT 2021. The overall scaled score is obtained by adding scaled scores of these three sections. While illustrating the scaling process, QA section is chosen as an example. Similar process is valid for the other two sections, i.e. DILR and VARC. 

Step 1: Calculate the mean and the standard deviation (SD) of the raw scores in QA section for all candidates appearing in the morning session. Let Mean = M1 and SD = S1 and G1 = M1 + S1.

Step 2: Calculate the mean and the standard deviation (SD) of the raw scores in QA section for all candidates appearing in the afternoon session. Let Mean = M2 and SD = S2 and G2 = M2 + S2. 

Step 3: Calculate the mean and the standard deviation (SD) of the raw scores in QA section for all candidates appearing in the evening session. Let Mean = M3 and SD = S3 and G3 = M3 + S3

Step 4: Calculate the mean and the standard deviation (SD) of the raw scores in QA section for all candidates appearing in CAT (i.e. including all the three sessions). Let Mean = M and SD = S and G = M + S.

Step 5: Calculate the mean raw score in QA section of the top 0.1% candidates in the morning session and denote it by 𝑀1 0.1 

Step 6: Calculate the mean raw score in QA of top 0.1% candidates in the afternoon session and denote it by 𝑀2 0.1 

Step 7: Calculate the mean raw score in QA of top 0.1% candidates in the evening session and denote it by 𝑀3 0.1 

Step 8: Calculate the mean raw score in QA of top 0.1% candidates appearing in CAT (i.e. considering all the three sessions) and denote it by 𝑀0.1 . 

Suppose now XYZ is a candidate who appeared in the morning session and her raw score in QA section is R. Then the scaled score of XYZ in QA, say 𝑅̂ given by: 

𝑅̂ = (𝑅 − 𝐺1 ) 𝑀0.1 − 𝐺 𝑀1 0.1 − 𝐺1 + G

In case XYZ is a candidate who appeared in the afternoon session and her raw score in QA section is R. Then the scaled score of XYZ in QA, say 𝑅̂ given by:

𝑅̂ = (𝑅 − 𝐺2 ) 𝑀0.1 − 𝐺 𝑀2 0.1 − 𝐺2 + G

In case XYZ is a candidate who appeared in the evening session and her raw score in QA section is R. Then the scaled score of XYZ in QA, say 𝑅̂ given by:

𝑅̂ = (𝑅 − 𝐺3 ) 𝑀0.1 − 𝐺 𝑀3 0.1 − 𝐺3 + G

Similar Methodology is applied for computation of scaled scores for other sections. If this formula yields any scaled score as more than 100, it will be rounded down to 100.