CAT Score vs Percentile 2025 (Expected) vs 2020–2024: What Marks to Percentile Conversion Expected this Year

CAT Score vs Percentile 2025: Understanding the Difference

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

Your raw score will be calculated as follows:

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:

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 2025 (Expected): Overall Analysis

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.

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.

CAT 2024 Score vs Percentile Section-wise Analysis (Cracku)

CAT Score vs Percentile 2023 Section-wise Analysis (Cracku)

CAT 2022 Score vs Percentile Section-wise Analysis (iQuanta)

CAT 2021 Score vs Percentile Section-wise Analysis (Cracku)

CAT 2020 Score vs Percentile Sectional Analysis (Cracku)

CAT Score vs Percentile 2025: Section-wise Target Scores for Top IIMs & Colleges

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.

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.

CAT Exam 2025: Why Small Score Changes Impact Percentile Heavily?

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.

CAT Score Vs Percentile 2025: Step-by-Step Conversion Process

Take a look at the following step-by-step process of how one can convert their CAT 2025 scores to the CAT percentile.

Step 1: Calculate Raw Score

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.

*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

Step 2: Check Slot Normalisation

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).

Step 3: Convert Scaled CAT Score to Percentile

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:

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%.

Step 4: Sectional Percentiles

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.