Score vs Percentile Mapping for CAT Exam

Score Vs Percentile in CAT 2019 Exam morning slot

Percentile	VA-RC	DI-LR	QA	Overall Score
99 %ile	70	49	60	162
95%ile	58	38	42	130
90%ile	50	32	33	108
85%ile (CUT-OFF)	42	27	28	92-95

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Score Vs Percentile in CAT 2019 Exam afternoon slot

Percentile	VA-RC	DI-LR	QA	Overall Score
99 %ile	65	49	60	160
95%ile	55	34	40	128
90%ile	50	32	33	108
85%ile (CUT-OFF)	42	27	28	94

Score Vs Percentile in CAT 2018 Exam morning slot

Percentile	VA-RC	DI-LR	QA	Overall Score
99 %ile	70	50	50	150
95%ile	55	38	38	120
90%ile	50	30	30	105
85%ile (CUT-OFF)	45	25	25	95

Score Vs Percentile in CAT 2018 Exam afternoon slot

Percentile	VA-RC	DI-LR	QA	Overall Score
99 %ile	69	48	47	145
95%ile	54	36	35	115
90%ile	48	28	27	100
85%ile (CUT-OFF)	44	23	22	90

Score vs Percentile Mapping for CAT exam – Overall

Percentile	2017	2016	2015
99	174	156	180
98	160	143	166
95	138	123	145
90	118	105	124
85	103	93	110
80	93	82	99

Score vs Percentile Mapping for CAT exam – Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension

Percentile	2017	2016	2015
99	74	75	78
98	71	70	75
95	64	62	67
90	56	54	58
85	50	48	51
80	46	44	46

Score vs Percentile Mapping for CAT exam – Quantitative Aptitude

Percentile	2017	2016	2015
99	74	55	67
98	67	48	61
95	55	40	51
90	45	32	41
85	37	28	35
80	32	24	30

Score vs Percentile Mapping for CAT exam – Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation

Percentile	2017	2016	2015
99	45	48	56
98	40	42	51
95	33	35	41
90	28	28	35
85	24	23	31
80	21	21	27

What can we mean by Score and Percentile within the CAT Exam?

Before we get to the mapping of Score and Percentile, allow us to attempt to understand a number of the essential concepts involved:
a) Raw Score
b) Scaled Score
c) Relationship of Raw Score and Scaled Score
d) Percentiles

Raw Score within the CAT  exam

The raw score is calculated based upon the questions that a CAT aspirant answers correctly or incorrectly. It’s got nothing to try to with relative mapping across different time slots. there’ll be 100 questions within the CAT exam.
For every question, regardless of type, that a CAT aspirant answers correctly, he would get +3 marks
For each objective type question that CAT aspirant answers incorrectly, he would get -1 marks
and for  non-objective / Fill within the Blank / Type within the Answer (TITA) that a CAT aspirant answers incorrectly, he would get 0 marks
Lastly for each question, regardless of type, that a CAT aspirant doesn’t attempt, he would get 0 marks
Based upon the above a raw score would be calculated for every section and for the general CAT exam. this is able to be the candidate’s raw score.

Scaled Score in CAT  exam

CAT 2020 exam would be conducted across two slots on the 29th November – Morning slot and Afternoon slot. All questions within the two slots wouldn’t be an equivalent. There would be some common questions but it’s hard to mention the precise number for them. this is able to mean that the problem level of the 2 slots, although on the brink of one another – would be slightly different. Roughly an equal number of CAT aspirants would attempt the paper in each slot so if one among the slots is marginally tougher than the opposite, it might be unfair to roughly 50% of the aspirants. to require care of this issue, raw scores are converted into scaled scores.

Relationship between Raw Score and Scaled Score

Suppose CAT aspirant A gets a raw score of 123 in slot 1 whereas CAT aspirant B gets an equivalent raw score of 123 in slot 2. allow us to assume that slot 1 was marginally tougher than slot 2. So, CAT aspirant A has performed marginally better than CAT aspirant B. So, when the scaling is completed CAT aspirant A would get a touch better-scaled score than CAT aspirant B.

Everything written till this particular point is completely true supported facts. Now, what’s given below is assumptions based upon my personal experience of lecture students and searching at scorecards over a previous couple of years. Given below are some deductions based upon those assumptions. Hopefully, this is able to answer a number of common questions by CAT aspirants.

1. Raw scores and Scaled scores wont to vary drastically when CAT was conducted across 40 different slots.

2. For low scores (50 %ile), Raw scores and Scaled still differ a touch, although not the maximum amount as CAT 2010 / 11 when the paper was conducted across an outsized number of slots.

3. For scores above 80%ile, there isn’t much difference between Raw Scores and Scaled Scores.

4. Since the problem level is more or less an equivalent, similar Raw Scores in two slots will cause similar Scaled Scores.

5. The difficulty level doesn’t vary much across the 2 slots.

6. If you blind guess the non-objective / Fill within the Blank / Type within the Answer (TITA) questions,
FACT – it’ll haven’t any impact on your raw score.
GUESS – it’ll have negligible, if any, impact on your scaled score.

7. you ought to not blind guess the non-objective / Fill within the Blanks / Type within the Answer (TITA) questions because:
a) It takes time to even blind guess.
b) Chances of getting it right are on the brink of none
c) it’s better to form an informed guess in 1 question than blind guess in 5.

Percentiles within the CAT exam

Percentiles within the CAT exam are like percentiles in the other field. These are just a representation of what percentage people are behind you therein test.

Suppose you get the 3rd rank in an exam that was taken by 50 people, then 47 people scored but you. Your percentile would be 47/50 * 100 = 94 Percentile

Suppose you top the exam that was taken by 2000 people, then 1999 people scored but you. Your percentile would be 1999/2000 * 100 = 99.95

Now you would possibly be wondering, why multiple people get 100 percentile within the CAT exam. I’m sure you’ve got seen those ads in newspapers. Well, that happens due to rounding off. Let me explain with an example.
Suppose you get 6th Rank within the CAT 2017 exam which was taken by 200,000 people. this suggests that 199,994 people scored but you.
So, your percentile would be 199994/200000 * 100 = 99.997
But the CAT scorecard only shows percentile up to 2 decimal digits. So, we might get to round this off. If we’ve to round this off to 2 decimal places, we’ll need to round it up to 100.00 percentile.

Note: IIM Ahmedabad has around 200 seats within the general category. So if they chose the highest 200 students based upon CAT score, they might have selected everyone above 99.9 percentile. Thankfully, that’s not the case and that they do consider tons of things aside from the percentile. that’s the rationale you sometimes hear about candidates with really high scores not getting selected within the old IIMs.

Also, read:

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