CAT Admit Card Date:05 Nov' 25 - 30 Nov' 25
CAT Score vs Percentile 2025: CAT is said to be one of the most competitive MBA entrance exams in India. This year, as per social media reports, IIM received 3.42 lakh email registrations for the upcoming CAT 2025 exam. The CAT exam will comprise three sections and will last for 120 minutes. To assess a candidate, a scaled scoring system will be used, which is often very confusing. Every year, MBA aspirants seek clarity between the CAT score vs percentile. Understanding how a raw score can be converted to percentiles will help one come up with an effective strategy. Going by past year trends, a raw score of 96-98 led to a 99+ percentile. To find out the expected CAT score vs percentile, and understand the difference between the two, keep reading the article.
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CAT Score: A CAT score is the total marks that the candidate obtains in the Common Admission Test (CAT) based on their performance in the CAT exam. There are three types of CAT scores: Raw score (direct total from the candidate’s answers), Scaled/Normalised score (adjusted score after slot normalisation) and Percentile (rank in comparison to other test-takers).
The CAT score can be calculated as follows:
Correct Answer (MCQ): +3 marks
Incorrect answer (MCQ): -1 marks
TITA/Mon-MCQ Questions: +3 marks for correct, no negative marking for wrong/unanswered questions.
Unattempted questions: 0 marks
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Your raw score will be calculated as follows:
Raw CAT Score = (number of correct answer x3) - (Number of incorrect MCQs x1) |
CAT Percentile: The CAT percentile is a relative ranking metric that shows how well a candidate performed as compared to all the other test-takers in that year. All candidates must note that the CAT percentile is not the same as their raw marks. Sectional percentiles are also given for VARC, DILR and QA. Two candidates with the same raw score may have slightly different percentiles if they were in different slots due to normalisation. Since IIMs have sectional cutoffs, candidates must perform well across all sections, not just overall.
The CAT percentile is calculated as follows:
CAT will assign a raw score based on the total number of correct/incorrect answers.
The normalisation process will be applied across three slots to account for differences in difficulty.
Candidates will be ranked according to scaled scores
The final CAT percentile will be calculated using this formula:
Percentile=(1−Total Candidates/Rank)×100 |
For example: If there are 2,00,000 candidates and your rank is 10,000, then, percentile = (1-10,000/2,00,000) X 100 = 95 percentile.
Check out the CAT 2025 percentile predictor by Careers360, which will help you with the same.
CAT score vs percentile data will depend on the previous years’ analysis. If the exam difficulty remains the same, then the 2025 statistics will resemble 2024. Take a look at the following table, which mentions the expected CAT 2025 score vs percentile.
CAT Percentile | CAT 2025 Expected VARC Score | CAT 2025 Expected DILR Score | CAT 2025 Expected QA Score |
80 Percentile | 18.00 | 17.00 | 11.00 |
85 Percentile | 20.00 | 19.00 | 14.00 |
90 Percentile | 24.00 | 22.00 | 17.00 |
95 Percentile | 30.00 | 27.00 | 22.00 |
98 Percentile | 36.00 | 34.00 | 29.00 |
99 Percentile | 41.00 | 38.00 | 33.00 |
100 Percentile | 59.00 | 63.00 | 57.00 |
Question: How much 96 percentile in CAT 2025 will mean how many marks?
Answer: 96 percentile in the CAT 2025 exam will be in the range of 66.3+ to 69.8+.
CAT Score vs Percentile 2025 vs 2024 vs 2023 vs 2022 vs 2021 vs 2020: Sectional Analysis
Going through previous years' CAT score vs percentile analysis will help one identify trends and what one can expect for this year. One must note that small changes in the CAT raw score can lead to large percentile jumps. Take a look at the following table, which mentions the CAT score vs percentile for previous years (section-wise) from 2020 to 2024.
Percentile | VARC Score | DILR Score | QA Score | Overall Score |
99.99 | 127 | — | — | — |
99.5 | 103.9 | — | — | — |
99 | 95.13 | — | — | — |
97 | 78.9 | |||
95 | 70.52 | — | — | — |
90 | 58.98 | — | — | — |
85 | 50.29 | — | — | — |
80 | 44.29 | — | — | — |
Percentile | VARC Score | DILR Score | QA Score | Overall Score |
100 | 61.66 | 50.4 | 49.46 | — |
99.99 | 58.20 | 42.66 | 44.89 | — |
99.9 | 51.14 | 36.58 | 34.96 | |
99.5 | 44 | 30.58 | 28.28 | — |
99 | 39.83 | 27.29 | 25.20 | — |
95 | 28.78 | 18.92 | 16.87 | — |
90 | 22.37 | 15.63 | 13.63 | — |
85 | 17.58 | 11.67 | 9.2 | — |
Percentile | VARC Score | DILR Score | QA Score | Overall Score |
100 | 136 | — | — | — |
99.9 | 114.15 | — | — | — |
99.5 | 104.28 | — | — | — |
99.4 | 102.56 | — | — | — |
99 | 87.20 | — | — | — |
95 | 60.70 | — | — | — |
90 | 52.63 | — | — | — |
85 | 46.57 | — | — | — |
Percentile | VARC Score | DILR Score | QA Score | Overall Score |
99.5 | 45 | 32 | 48 | 103 |
99 | 40 | 28 | 42 | 95 |
98 | 36 | 25 | 36 | 84 |
95 | 31 | 20 | 27 | 70 |
90 | 26 | 16 | 22 | 56 |
85 | 22 | 14 | 18 | 48 |
Percentile | VARC Score | DILR Score | QA Score | Overall Score |
99 | 40-44 | 34-36 | 43-44 | 105-110 |
95 | 32-35 | 20-32 | 36-38 | 88-94 |
90 | 29-31 | 25-27 | 32-34 | 78-81 |
85 | 24-27 | 20-23 | 25-29 | 72-74 |
Here are the section-wise CAT cutoff requirements for top IIMs (approx.). Through this data, you will get an idea of how much a candidate must aim for to get admission to the top IIMs in India.
IIM | VARC | DILR | QA | Overall |
IIM Ahmedabad | 80%ile | 80%ile | 80%ile | 99%ile |
IIM Bangalore | 85%ile | 85%ile | 85%ile | 99%ile |
IIM Calcutta | 80%ile | 80%ile | 80%ile | 99%ile |
IIM Lucknow | 85%ile | 85%ile | 85%ile | 97+%ile |
IIM Kozhikode | 80%ile | 80%ile | 80%ile | 97+%ile |
IIM Indore | 80%ile | 80%ile | 80%ile | 97+%ile |
IIM Shillong | 75%ile | 75%ile | 75%ile | 90-92%ile |
Note: Now, several other IIMs and Tier 1 private colleges like MDI, SPJIMR, FMS Delhi and IIT Bombay also accept candidates with 95-97%ile with sectional cutoffs around 70-75%ile.
Here are the reasons why small CAT score changes can significantly impact percentiles.
High Competition at the Top End: The majority of aspirants score in the mid-range (30-70 percentile). Very few candidates make it to the top percentiles (90-99.9 percentiles), separating thousands of candidates. For instance, even a difference of 3-4 marks can move you from 95 percentile to 97 percentile.
Compressed Score Distribution: Since the CAT exam has only 66 questions, this means that each question will carry 3 marks (MCQ) and 3 marks without negative marking (TITA).
Normalisation Across Slots: Since the CAT exam is only held in 3 slots, a normalisation process will be conducted. After which, all raw score differences will become amplified to percentile shifts.
Limited Number of High Scores: Each year, only around 200-300 students get to reach the 99.9 percentile.
Take a look at the following step-by-step process of how one can convert their CAT 2025 scores to the CAT percentile.
Calculating the CAT raw score is easy once the candidate knows the number of questions they attempted and how many were correct or incorrect. Take a look at the CAT raw score calculation formula.
Raw Score = (Correct MCQs x 3) - (incorrect MCQs x 1) + (Correct TITA x3) |
*Unattempted questions will not affect the score.
Take a look at the example to understand the above formula in a better way.
Suppose a candidate attempted:
MCQs: 60 total, where 50 were correct and 10 were incorrect
TITA: 5 correct and 2 unattempted questions
So, to calculate MCQ contributions:
(50x3)- (10x1) = 150-10 = 140
To calculate TITA contributions:
5x3 =15
To add both contributions:
140+15 = 155
Therefore, the final raw score will be 155
Since the CAT exam is conducted in multiple slots, the raw scores are normalised to adjust for the difficulty differences across the 3 slots. After the CAT normalisation process, this will give the candidate their scaled score (used for percentile calculation).
This is all about having a basic understanding of how one’s performance compares to all test-takers after the normalisation process. The scaled score will equal the normalised score after accounting for slot difficulty.
To convert a scaled score to a percentile, one can follow this basic formula to calculate the percentile:
Percentile=(1−Total CandidatesRank)×100 |
Example:
Suppose 2,00,00 total candidates took the CAT exam, and your rank is 10,000. Then, by using the above-mentioned formula, the percentile will come out to be 95%.
Lastly, CAT also provides sectional percentiles for all three sections: VARC, DILR and QA. CAT sectional scores are normalised in the same manner as the CAT scores.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
A safe score in the CAT exam will depend on your target B-school, but generally, 150+ marks is needed for getting admission to top IIMs, while 120-149 marks is needed for mid-tier and other reputed institutes.
To achieve a 99.9 percentile in the CAT exam, a candidate will need a scaled score of around 101-127 marks, although this will vary from year to year depending on the CAT paper’s overall difficulty and the specific exam year.
A raw score of 40 in the CAT exam will typically correspond to a percentile in the range of 77-83 percentile. Although, this can vary slightly depending on the overall difficulty of the CAT exam and in which slot was it taken.
On Question asked by student community
Hello,
With 802 marks in TS Inter and ST category, you have a fair chance of getting admission in BPT (Bachelor of Physiotherapy) in some private colleges through state counselling.
However, for government colleges, the cutoff may be slightly higher, so keep options open for management quota or allied health colleges too.
Hope you understand.
Hey,
You already have a strong profile with the score of 58% in Class 10, 74% in Class 12, and 80% in graduation, but admission in IIT Bombay, Shailesh J Mehta School of Management is quite competitive, especially if you are in general category because the cutoff for general goes to 98.5-99%. Your CAT percentage is impressive but your 10th marks might reduce your score during the shortlisting process. If you perform well in Written Ability Test and Personal Interview, and present your commerce background you still stand a fair chance. But it would also be wise if you have some backups like MDI Gurugram, IMT Ghaziabad, IMI Delhi, where your marks and profile will fit well in their selection range.
HELLO,
I am providing you the link below through which you will be able to download the previous 10 years CAT question papers
Here is the link :- CAT Previous year Question papers
Hope this Helps!
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Hello,
Yes, Pragati Engineering College offers seats in Category-B (Management quota) for B.Tech programmes. The selection criteria is mentioned as the per the guidelines issued by the AP State Council of Higher Education (APSCHE). The applications are available on the college's official website.
You can know more about the college and the courses from the link given below:
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Hope it helps!!!
Directions for question :
M/s Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, one of the top four audit and accounting firms in the world with headquarters at London, UK, and with an operational presence in 153 countries, hires Management Trainees (MT) from all the premier management institutes of India thrice every year, in the months of January, May and September.
Each new group of Management Trainees (MT) have to go through a four month rigorous training schedule, after which they have to pass through a test consisting of a written assessment and a case-analysis. The top hundred ranked Management Trainees (MT) based on the performance in the test are confirmed as Management Executives (ME). The rest are given the opportunity of undergoing the training for four months one more time along with the next batch of Management Trainees (MT) and then passing through the subsequent test consisting of the written assessment and case-analysis. The Management Trainee (MT) who fails to get confirmed as a Management Executive (ME) the second time is fired.
The scatter-graph below depicts the number of Management Trainees (MT) at Deloitte taking the tests from January 2020 till May 2022, and the vis-à-vis hired Management Trainees (MT) at Deloitte who were fired :
It is also known that for the month of September 2019 at Deloitte, 96 hired Management Trainees (MT) failed to be confirmed as a Management Executive (ME) the first time, and that 36 hired Management Trainees (MT) were fired.
Question :
In which test did the minimum number of Management Trainees (MT) get confirmed as a Management Executive (ME) in the second attempt ?
September 2020
May 2021
January 2021
January 2022
Directions for question:
The bar-graph given below shows the foreign exchange reserves of Nepal (in million Rupees) from 2014 to 2021. Answer the following questions based on the graph :
Question:
What was the percentage increase (rounded to the nearest integer, if deemed necessary) in the foreign exchange reserves in 2020 over 2016 ?
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