CAT 2020 Exam Dates, Registration, Syllabus, Preparation, Result, Cutoff, IIM Selection Process

CAT Result

Common Admission Test, like every other computer-based exam, utilises multiple versions of the test. Thus CAT result contains two types of scores: a raw score and a scaled score. 

CAT 2019 Result Highlights 

• 2.09 lakh students appeared in CAT 2019, where only 10 candidates scored a 100 percentile

• All the 100 percentile scorers were male and came from an engineering background

• About 75,000 female candidates appeared for CAT 2019 where only one female candidate from BITS Pilani scored 99.98 percentile

• The candidates who meet the minimum CAT cut off will be eligible for Written Ability Test (WAT), Personal Interview (PI) and Group Discussion rounds which will be held in February 2020

How are CAT Scores Calculated 

The raw score calculated for each section is based on the number of correct, incorrect and unattempted answers. 

• Candidates are given 3 marks for each correct answer and a mark is deducted for each incorrect answer. 

• No marks are allotted for unanswered questions. 

• The marks are adjusted and placed on a common scale to ensure suitable translation of the scores. 

Registration for Non-IIMs

• Go to the official CAT website and click on “Registration of Non-IIM Institutions for CAT”

• You will be redirected to the exam conducting IIM’s official webpage

• Download the “MOU form” and the “application form” from the links given below on the page

• The candidate will be then asked to make a non-refundable payment in favour of the exam conducting IIM. It is advised to go through the “MOU form” for payment details and other relevant information about the fee. 

• Candidates will then need to send signed and stamped copies of the “MOU form” (2 copies) and “application form” (1 copy) along with other required documents to the Admission Office of the exam conducting authority.

Individuals who will qualify the cutoff and excel in other parameters such as previous academic qualification, diversity, work experience etc. will be called for the written ability test (WAT), group discussion round (GD) and personal interview (PI). 

How to Download CAT Scorecard

Candidates will receive CAT 2019 Result updates on their officially registered email and mobile number. The result can also be accessed from the official website. The steps to download CAT Score Card are as follows (infographics):

• Step 1: Visit the Official website
• Step 2: Click on Download CAT Score Card.
• Step 3: Candidates will be redirected to the login page 
• Step 4: Candidate after entering their User Id and Password will be redirected to their “Account Page”
• Step 5: Click on the ‘Download Scorecard’ link and download it for future correspondence

However, candidates can also use Collegedunia's exclusive CAT Percentile Predictor to determine their ranks based on their respective percentiles.

In 2019, CAT toppers emerged from all parts of the country. 10 students scored a perfect 100 percentile in the exam, while 21 individuals scored 99.99, having said that a lower percentile with a couple of additional marks can fetch someone a handsome percentile boost.

Be that as it may, as we go higher this relationship gets modified. This implies that the person who scored a 100th percentile score may have gotten almost double the score acquired by somebody who scored 94th or 95th percentile. This type of relationship is legit for a majority of competitive exams. 

Obtaining a score of 90 percentile or above in CAT exam is the only way to get into the most prestigious b-schools of India. But out of the 2 lakh applicants, nearly 1000 are the ones who go anywhere near that number. Candidates who are seeking to score a 99.5th percentile are advised to make it a habit to get nearly everything correct. Most of the applicants might attempt around 75 out of 100 questions and get 70 correct. If we talk in vague terms of an 80% accuracy rate, attempting 80 questions could be like playing hardball. 

How is CAT Percentile Calculated? 

The calculation of CAT percentile can be done in three steps - 

• Each candidate is first checked for section-wise scores and then later on the overall score is arrived at by totalling section-wise scores

• These section-wise scores or referred to as the raw scores are then normalized to arrive at a scaled CAT score

• The normalized scores are later on converted into percentiles which are outlined on the CAT scorecard

Keeping Quantitative Ability (QA) as an example, the stepwise procedure for the calculation of overall score and percentile score is as follows:

• Step 1: Calculate the total number of candidates (N) who appeared for CAT in both the sessions i.e. morning and evening. 

• Step 2: Assign a rank (r), based on the scaled scores obtained in the QA section, to all candidates who appeared for CAT. If two or more candidates obtain equal scores in the QA section, then identical ranks will be assigned to those candidates.

For example, if two candidates obtain the highest scaled score in the QA section, then the assigned rank of both the candidates will be 1. The candidate(s) obtaining the second-highest scaled score in the QA section will be assigned Rank 3 and so on.

• Step 3: The percentile score (P) of a candidate with rank(r) in the QA section can be calculated using the following formula: 

P = ((N-r) N) x 100

• Step 4: Finally, round off the calculated percentile score (P) of a candidate up to two decimal points. For example, all percentile scores greater than or equal to 99.995 are rounded off to 100, all percentile scores which are greater than or equal to 99.985 but less than 99.995 are rounded off to 99.99 and so on. 

If a candidate with ‘x’ score gets 95th percentile, then a 99th percentile might be required for them to score 1.4x, whereas for a 99.5th percentile they might need 1.75x and 100th percentile might require 1.9–2x.

A score of 95 in all the three sections will generally fetch the candidate a better overall percentile than a plain average of the three percentiles.

CAT Score Vs Percentile

• 95.01 percentile and above
• 90.01 to 95 percentile
• 85.01 to 90 percentile
• 80 to 85 percentile