CAT Score vs Percentile

CAT or Common Aptitude Test is one of the most popular entrance exams among students aspiring to get into their dream business schools. Now that CAT 2023 is going to be held on 26th November 2023, the students have started fighting tooth and nail to acquire a good CAT percentile to get admission into their dream institutes like the Faculty of Management Studies, S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies and 1000 other business schools in India. However, students get confused between the CAT score and the CAT percentile. Thus, this comprehensive blog with help you elaborate on CAT score vs percentile.

Also Read: How To Prepare For CAT?

What is CAT Score?

We all know that CAT is a competitive management-level entrance exam conducted by the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) at the national level. Before you understand the CAT score vs percentile, let us first discuss the marking scheme and exam pattern which affects the CAT score.

Sections	No. of Questions	Total Marks
Quantitative Ability	34	102
Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension	34	102
Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation	32	96

Talking about the ‘CAT score’, the question paper includes 100 questions in all. For every correct answer, 3 marks are awarded and for each wrong response, 1 mark is deducted. The final CAT Score is obtained after compiling the total marks of each individual section. The maximum marks allotted to candidates is a total of 300.

What is CAT Percentile?

Your CAT percentile depends upon a certain percentage of students below you in the merit list. Suppose, you acquire 90 percentile in CAT, this would mean that 90% of candidates who appeared for CAT fall below you in the merit list. Additionally, you would be considered as one of the top 10% of the candidates who appeared for the exam.

Read: Here Is Everything You Need To Know About CAT 2021

What is a Scaled Score?

To ensure fairness and equality, the question papers of both the morning and the afternoon shifts are set differently with a slightly distinct collection of questions. Adhering to the marking scheme of the exam, the scaled score is obtained through *normalization. A scaled score is more or less the same as the raw score. 

*Normalizing is one such process that hugely determines the CAT score vs percentile factor. This process is based on the sole assumption that the distribution of abilities and skills in the candidates remains the same across the country and in different sessions. This is a smart scaling technique that the IIMs follow, similar to the GATE exam. Basically, using the parameters of location and session, the difficulty of papers is adjusted and equalized during the scaling of the raw CAT scores obtained by the candidates. This ensures that there is no disparity among the scores and ensures equality for every single one. 

CAT Score vs Percentile: How to Calculate CAT Percentile?

IIM Kozhikode, which is the conducting body of the CAT 2023 to be held on 26th November 2023, has released the steps to calculate the CAT percentile. To help you with the enigma of CAT score vs percentile, here’s a detailed method on how to calculate the CAT Percentile:

Step 1: Calculate the Total Number of Students Appeared for the Exam

Add up all the candidates who appeared for the CAT exam in the morning and afternoon sessions. Say the number of students appearing for the exam is ‘N’.

Step 2: Assign Ranks to the Candidates on the Basis of the Scaled Score

After the process of normalization, an overall scaled score is obtained. Based on that score, the candidates are assigned specific ranks (r).

Step 3: Calculate CAT Percentile

Based on the following formula, calculate the CAT Percentile with the available variables, N and r. 

P= [( N – r )/ N] x 100, where P is CAT Percentile, N is the Total Number of Candidates Appeared for CAT Exam and r is the Rank of the Candidate

CAT Score vs Percentile

After obtaining an estimated scaled score through normalizing, here comes the real deal of CAT score vs percentile. Look at the tabular representation below to get a better understanding of the CAT score and percentile:

Also Read:

• Everything You Need to Know About CAT 2021
• GMAT 2019 – A Complete Study Guide to know GMAT Inside Out

FAQs

For those, preparing for their CAT 2023 examination, CAT score vs percentile is of high value. We hope you’ll be able to make it through your exam and acquire your seat in one of the top business schools. If you’re planning to study MBA abroad, you can reach out to our experts at Leverage Edu who are there to guide you in cracking your GMAT exam. All the best!