CAT 2015 in its revamped look has made many test takers cry with multiple times increase in number of candidates scoring negative percentile over last year. There are 6867 candidates who have scored negative percentile in CAT 2015 while this number was somewhere around 2700 in last year CAT exam. The sharp increase has recorded a jump of 2.5 times. Sharing with MBAUniverse.com, IIM Ahmedabad has informed “Out of 6872 candidates scoring zero marks and negative percentile scores in CAT 2015 there are 6867 candidates with negative percentile and 5 with zero marks”
5 with zero marks
There are 5 candidates who have scored zero percentile in CAT 2015. The score of zero marks has awarded positive percentile in CAT 2015 while zero percentile has gone to such candidates who scored negative marks.
Those who refrained from attempting any question have been awarded a percentile around 5 or so. It implies that the candidates with some negative score have been awarded zero percentile and those going below it have been sliding down with more negative percentile scores.
Alarming increase in negative percentilers
Usually, there are a few candidates every year who do not take CAT seriously and some of them mark all answers incorrect. This pattern awards negative marks to them which, when converted to percentile scores is turned into negative percentile.
Since such candidates were more in CAT 2015 as more registrations were there and more candidates appeared in CAT 2015, the percentage of candidates scoring negative marks has gone up substantially. Besides there were 650 test venues as against 354 last year which has also given rise to the number of negative percentilers in CAT 2015.
Revamped look also added to the number
The entirely changed look of CAT 2015 exam pattern comprising 3 sections instead of earlier 2 sections and carving out the interdependent parts of sections like DI taken out of Quant and LR taken out of Verbal to form a new section DILR could have also added to award of negative percentile in CAT 2015.
Candidates are more apprehensive on DI and LR questions which become nightmare to them. Earlier they used to compensate it with Quant and Verbal but nothing could be done in CAT 2015 and this caused a severe sectional dip in scores as well as rise in number of candidates scoring negative percentile.
Non-MCQs saved further increase in negative percentilers
The 28 Non-MCQs out of total 100 questions in CAT 2015 did not carry any negative marking for wrong answers. This might have restricted further increase in number of candidates scoring negative percentile.
CAT 2015 so far
There were 218664 candidates who registered for Common Admission Test (CAT) 2015. Out of them 179602 candidates appeared in CAT 2015 exam on November 29, 2015 in 136 test cities at 650 testing sites. The detailed result for CAT 2015 was declared in the evening on February 8, 2016 with rumours of leakage in the morning which were reported as technical glitches by IIM Ahmedabad. Candidates were able to view their result in the morning hours due to which TCS the testing partner for CAT 2015 later blocked the site.
17 candidates including one female all from engineering background have scored perfect 100 percentile, while 1814 candidates have scored 99+ percentile, 9003 have scored 95+ percentile in CAT 2015. Most of the IIMs in accordance with their admission policy for PGP 2016-18 have announced the shortlists of candidates for the PI round.
Interestingly, many candidates in the premium category of 99 and above percentile have not been shortlisted by any of the IIMs and now, so far as IIMs are concerned they are no better than the candidates with zero or negative percentile, as none of the IIMs would be shortlisting them for 2nd stage of admission round, although admission opportunities can be explored by them in other B-schools where sectional percentile score is not mandatory.
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Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more updates on CAT 2015
