Why CAT results are reported as a percentile rather than a raw score, how normalization works across exam slots, and what percentile range different IIMs typically expect.
Two candidates can score the same raw marks and end up with different percentiles, or the reverse — different raw marks but the same percentile. This confuses many first-time test takers, and understanding why prevents a lot of unnecessary panic on results day.
What a percentile actually measures, why CAT uses normalization, and roughly what percentile range different tiers of business schools tend to expect.
A percentage measures how many marks out of the total you scored. A percentile measures your standing relative to everyone else who took the exam. A 99th percentile means you performed better than 99% of all test-takers that year — it says nothing directly about your raw score.
This is why CAT results are reported in percentile, not percentage: with tens of thousands of candidates across varying question difficulty, percentile is the fairer way to compare performance.
CAT is conducted across multiple time slots on the same day, and it is nearly impossible to make every slot's question set exactly equally difficult. Normalization statistically adjusts each candidate's score to account for the relative difficulty of the slot they sat, so a candidate who happened to get a harder slot is not unfairly disadvantaged compared to one who got an easier slot.
This is also why your raw score and your final percentile can look surprising side by side — the underlying comparison is never simply "your marks out of total marks."
CAT reports both an overall percentile and a sectional percentile for each of the three sections. Many IIMs and other B-schools set minimum cutoffs for both — meaning a strong overall percentile with one noticeably weak section can still fall short of a specific school's shortlist criteria. This is a common and avoidable mistake: balanced section-wise performance often matters as much as a high overall number.
These ranges shift slightly every year and vary by category and program, so always verify against the current year's official cutoff data rather than treating any number here as fixed.
Read CAT Overview if you haven't already, and IIM Lucknow for what a specific target institute's expectations actually look like.
Part of: MBA & IIM Admissions