CAT 2014: Understand your CAT Scores; Scaled Score and Percentile to final Percentile

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MBAUniverse.com News Desk |
December 29, 2014
The CAT 2014 score card reflects 2 type of scores namely scaled scores and percentile scores but does not reflect your raw scores earned by you
`Percentile refers to percentage of candidates who receive score less than or equal to the score obtained by the candidate` CAT Centre 2014

CAT 2014 result declared on Dec 27, 2014 has brought with it a different type of score card as compared to the score cards in earlier CAT results. The CAT 2014 score card reflects 2 type of scores namely scaled scores and percentile scores but does not reflect your raw scores earned by you in CAT 2014.  The scaled scores and percentile scores are arrived at after converting the raw scores to scaled scores and then converting them to percentile scores. The process is known as normalization of scores.

The test takers of CAT 2014 would remember that raw scoring pattern as declared for CAT 2014 exam by the CAT Centre 2014 was that 3 marks would be awarded for every correct answer and in case of any wrong answer, a penalty of  1/3 mark was to be imposed.  Since maximum number of questions in CAT 2014 was 100, a CAT 2014 test taker could score not more than 300 raw marks, if he/she could attempt all the questions correct. But this might not be the case and no one could attempt all the questions correct.

Top 0.1 percent scorers were scaled in top slot and accordingly the score scaling was done for the rest of the candidates section wise. After this exercise, the scores were converted to percentile. CAT 2014 result score card therefore felt no need to declare the raw scores and as such scaled scores have been reflected in the CAT 2014 score card.

Normalization process across different test sessions

Raw scores of CAT 2014 have been converted to scaled scores. CAT Centre 2014 declares “In order to ensure fairness and equity in comparison of performances of the candidates across different test sessions, the scores of the candidates shall be subjected to a process of Normalization. The Normalization process to be implemented shall adjust for location and scale differences of score distributions across different forms and the scaled scores obtained by this process shall be converted into percentiles for purposes of shortlisting.”

GATE pattern adopted

The scoring pattern is on the lines of GATE exam as announced by CAT Centre 2014. On the question of transparency of normalization process across the multiple sessions CAT Centre 2014 states “The process of Normalization is an established practice for comparing candidate scores across multiple Forms and is similar to those being adopted in other large educational selection tests conducted in India such as Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE).”

Understand the scoring pattern

For the examinations conducted  in multiple sessions, suitable normalization process is applied to take into account any variation in the difficulty levels of the question sets across the different sessions. The normalization is done based on the fundamental assumption that "in all multi-session GATE papers, the distribution of abilities of candidates is the same across all the sessions".

According to the GATE committee, this assumption is justified since "the number of candidates appearing in multi-session subjects in GATE 2014 is large and the procedure of allocation of session to candidates is random. Further it is also ensured that for the same multi-session subject, the number of candidates allotted in each session is of the same order of magnitude."

Know the GATE formula

Based on the above the committee arrived at the following formula for calculating the normalized marks, for CE, CS, EC, EE and ME subjects. From GATE 2014 onward (and year 2014-15 of the 2-year validity period of GATE 2013 score), a candidate's GATE score is computed by the following new formula.

S = Sq + (St - Sq)= M-Mq / Mt-Mq

where, S = Score (normalized) of a candidate; M = Marks obtained by a candidate ("normalized marks" in case of multiple-session subjects CE, CS, EC, EE and ME); Mq = Qualifying marks for general category candidates in that subject (usually 25 or μ + σ, whichever is higher); μ = Average (i.e. arithmetic mean) of marks of all candidates in that subject; σ = Standard deviation of marks of all candidates in that subject; Mt = Average marks of top 0.1 % candidates (for subjects with 10000 or more appeared candidates) or top 10 candidates (for subjects with less than 10000 appeared candidates); St = 900 = Score assigned to Mt;   Sq = 350 = Score assigned to Mq.

Percentile:

A candidate's percentile denotes the percentage of candidates scoring lower than that particular candidate. It is calculated as: Percentile = ( 1 - All India rank( No. of candidates in that subject) x 100%

Score scaling: CAT 2014 adopted the process

On the similar note the formula to calculate the percentile in CAT 2014 can be devised. Experts with MBAUniverse.com have decoded the pattern of normalization and calculation of percentile in CAT 2014 as follows-

Normalized marks (︿Mij) of jth candidate in ith slot, is given by
︿Mij = Mgt - MgqMti - Miq ( Mij - Miq ) + Mgq
where,
Mij is the actual marks obtained by the jth candidate in the ith slot,
Mgt is the average marks of the top 0.1 % candidates in all slots,
Mgq is the sum of mean and standard deviation of marks of all candidates in all slots,
Mti is the average of marks of top 0.1 % candidates in the ith slot,
Miq is the sum of mean and standard deviation of marks of all candidates in the ith slot.

Score Scaling example

Total aspirants = 2,00,000
slots = 4
aspirants in each slot = 50,000 [.1% of it = 50] scaled as top scorers.

Mij  = 202 out of 300  ( are the actual marks obtained by the jth candidate in the 3rd slot)
Mgt = [195 + 202 + 210 + 205 ]/4 = 203 ( is the average marks of the top 0.1 % candidates in all slots)
here, 195, 202, 210 and 205 are the average of the top .1% aspirants of all slots

Mgq =  125   (is the sum of mean and standard deviation of marks of all candidates in all slots)
Mti    =  210   (is the average of marks of top 0.1 % candidates in the 3rd slot)
Miq    = 128    (is the sum of mean and standard deviation of marks of all candidates in the 3rd slot.)

According to the given formula, normalized marks = (203-125)(202-128)/(210-128) + 125 = 195.4

The relative high percentile

The above score is supposed to fetch a percentile near about 99.5. On the similar note and going by the relative difficulty level across the sections in different slots of CAT 2014 examination, CAT 2014 takers might have scored a high sectional or uneven sectional percentile.

Score Scaling & Percentile: Key points to note

CAT Centre 2014 has shared that the Scaled Scores of Section-1 and Section-2 are not additive. The Overall Scaled Scores is based on the total raw scores earned by the candidate.

Percentile refers to percentage of candidates who receive score less than or equal to the score obtained by the candidate. According to this formula a candidate may score high scaled scores but his/her percentile may be lower than the scaled scores.

It is also possible that you might have scored low sectional scaled score but high sectional percentile but when it comes to over all percentile, despite the good overall scaled scores, the percentile may be low.

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