CAT Score vs Percentile 2025: Marks Required for 90, 95, 99 Percentile

The CAT exam is not just a test of aptitude but also one of strategy and competition. Every year, more than 2 lakh candidates appear for the CAT, but only a select few achieve the much-coveted 99+ percentile that opens doors to elite institutes like the IIMs, FMS, and other premier B-Schools. One of the most commonly asked questions by aspirants is: “What is the difference between CAT score and percentile, and how exactly do raw marks translate into percentile?”

This confusion is natural—the terms “score” and “percentile” are often used interchangeably in casual conversations, but in CAT, they mean completely different things. Your score (or raw marks) reflects your direct performance in terms of questions attempted correctly, incorrectly, or skipped. However, your percentile doesn’t depend only on your marks—it depends on how everyone else has performed across different slots.

To illustrate: In one year, scoring 95 marks (roughly 48% of the paper) could place you in the top 1% (99 percentile). But in another year with an easier exam paper, the same 95 marks might give you only ~95 percentile. It all depends on relative performance, exam difficulty, and normalization.

This article unpacks CAT score vs percentile in detail—covering key terms, exam pattern, the score-to-percentile conversion process, year-wise mappings, strategic insights, and tools to estimate your percentile instantly after the exam. By the end, you’ll know exactly how to set your score targets for CAT 2025.

Key Definitions

Before analyzing the full score-to-percentile mechanism, aspirants must get familiar with the basic terms. Competitor blogs like IMS India and Career Launcher often throw around these words, but they are rarely broken down systematically.

CAT Raw Score

In the CAT (Common Admission Test), the raw score refers to the actual marks you obtain in the exam directly from your responses, without any adjustments, scaling, or normalization. It is the most basic and unprocessed score, calculated purely according to the official marking scheme of the exam.

• +3 marks for each correct question (MCQ or TITA).

• −1 mark for each wrong MCQ.

• 0 for wrong or unattempted TITA (since there’s no negative marking here).

Example Calculation:
Suppose an aspirant attempts 18 VARC questions correctly, 4 incorrectly, skips 2, answers 7 DILR correctly, 3 incorrectly, and 10 QA correctly with 4 incorrect.

Marks = (18 × 3 − 4) + (7 × 3 − 3) + (10 × 3 − 4) = 50 + 18 + 26 = 94 raw score.

CAT Scaled/Normalized Score

Because CAT is held in multiple slots, the difficulty of question papers can vary slightly from one slot to another. If we used raw scores directly, candidates who happened to be in an easier slot could gain an unfair advantage. Normalization (also called scaling or equating) is the statistical process used to remove this unfairness so that scores from different slots become comparable.

Normalization converts raw marks from different CAT slots into a common, fair scale by comparing each slot’s score distribution (mean and spread) with a reference distribution — typically using statistical mapping (e.g., z-scores and linear rescaling) — so candidates from harder slots are not disadvantaged when percentiles are computed.

Here’s how it works at a high level:

• Compute mean and standard deviation of scores in each slot.

• Compare these to the overall distribution.

• Adjust each candidate’s raw marks to align with equivalent difficulty levels of other slots.

For example, if Slot 1’s DILR section is tougher than Slot 2’s, scores from Slot 1 are scaled slightly higher to compensate.

CAT Percentile

A CAT percentile tells you how well you performed in the Common Admission Test (CAT) relative to every other test-taker. It is a relative ranking measure - not a percentage of marks - and is used by IIMs and other B-schools to shortlist candidates.

Below is a full, clear, and practical breakdown of what percentile means, how it’s calculated, why it matters, and how to interpret it.

Percentile is what matters for calls, not percentage.

• Percentage simply means marks obtained out of total marks.

• Percentile represents rank-based comparison with others.

Formula:

Percentile=(1−Total Number of Candidates / Candidate’s Rank​)×100

If you are rank 500 among 200,000 students:

(1−500/200000)×100=99.75

(1−500/200000)×100=99.75

Thus, percentiles indicate your position in the competition pool, rather than raw achievement.

CAT Exam Pattern & Marking Scheme

Understanding the structure of CAT is vital because even small changes in the pattern affect how marks translate to percentiles.

• Sections:

• VARC (Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension)

• DILR (Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning)

• QA (Quantitative Ability)

• Questions: Around 66 (may vary ~2 Qs year to year: VARC ~24, DILR ~20, QA ~22).

• Marks: +3 for each correct, −1 for wrong MCQ, 0 for wrong/unattempted TITA.

• Total Marks: 198 marks.

• Duration: 120 minutes overall (40 per section, strict sectional lock).

These structural details matter because number of questions directly impacts cutoffs: fewer questions often mean lower marks required for high percentiles.

The Conversion Pipeline: Raw Marks to Percentile

This process has three distinct phases. Aspirants often misunderstand these as a black box, so here’s a breakdown:

Step 1: Raw Score Calculation

Your responses on test day → raw marks. Straightforward tally based on marking scheme.

Step 2: Slot Normalization

This is critical. CAT runs in 3 slots, but no two slots are precisely identical in difficulty. Examples:

• In CAT 2024, Slot 2 QA was tougher than Slot 1 QA.

• In CAT 2024, many aspirants said Slot 1 DILR was especially difficult.

Normalization ensures that difficulty variation doesn’t penalize or benefit any slot unfairly. This is done by:

• Calculating mean and standard deviation for each slot.

• Scaling scores to a common benchmark across slots.

• Adjusting sectional scores as well as overall scores.

Step 3: Computing Percentiles

• Candidates ranked on normalized scores (overall and sectional).

• Formula applied to calculate percentile.

• Finally, scorecards report sectional scaled score, sectional percentile, and overall percentile.

Illustration:
Candidate A (Slot 1) scores 90 raw → normalized to 94 → percentile 98.6.
Candidate B (Slot 3) scores 91 raw → normalized to 89 → percentile 97.9.
Even though B’s raw marks are higher, A’s tougher slot scaling rebalances the results.

Year-Wise Trends and CAT Marks vs Percentile Mapping

One of the most searched queries after every CAT exam is:
“How many marks for 99 percentile?”

Here’s a consolidated table (approximate, varies across coaching estimates):

Key Takeaways:

Sectional Approx. Mapping (CAT 2024 estimates):

Why the Mapping Changes Every Year

CAT marks-to-percentile mapping shifts because of:

• Overall exam difficulty: More difficult questions → lower cutoff marks for high percentiles.

• Slot variation: Adjusted by normalization but still changes cutoff bands.

• Competitor pool: Rising number of well-prepared students over years.

• Pattern shifts: Reduction in question count post-2020 lowered required raw marks.

• Negative marking and risk-taking: Aggressive attempts vs accuracy differences.

This is why fixed cutoffs don’t exist. Aspirants must always track recent 2–3 year trends.

How Many Marks for Top Percentiles: CAT 2025 Targets

Based on consolidated trends, here’s what aspirants can target for 2025:

 

Notice that only around half marks (~100/198) can make you part of the top 1% scorers.

Sectional Strategy: Balancing Strengths and Weaknesses

Percentiles aren’t just overall—they’re sectional too.

• VARC often acts as a game-changer since many students are weak in comprehension. Target 40–45 raw for 99 percentile.

• DILR is “all or nothing.” Even solving 2 full sets (~40 marks) can get you 99 percentile.

• QA is considered easiest for engineers, but cutoff sectional percentiles are high.

Why Sectional Percentiles Matter:

Top IIMs (A/B/C) require minimum 80–85 percentiles in each section in addition to overall 99 percentile. Even a single weak sectional percentile can disqualify you.

For example, a student with overall 99.4 percentile but only 72 in VARC may get rejected by IIM Ahmedabad.

Practical Tools to Estimate Your Percentile after CAT

After the exam, aspirants can immediately check percentile using tools from:

• IMS India CAT Score Predictor

• Career Launcher Predictor

• Cracku Score Calculator

• iQuanta Predictor

By uploading your official response sheet (released by IIMs soon after CAT), these calculators provide:

• Raw score calculation.

• Normalization-adjusted estimate.

• Predicted percentile range (90–95, 95–98, etc.).

These are estimates but historically accurate within ±1 percentile range.

FAQs about CAT Score vs Percentile

FAQs:

1. How many marks are required for 99 percentile in CAT 2025?
   Around 100–110 marks depending on difficulty.

2. Is percentile the same as percentage?
   No. Percentage = marks out of total. Percentile = relative performance ranking.

3. Will two candidates with equal raw scores have equal percentiles?
   Usually yes, though slot normalization may cause very minor percentile differences.

4. Can I clear overall cutoff but miss a sectional cutoff?
   Yes. That candidate won’t get calls from IIMs that enforce both sectional and overall cutoffs.