CAT 2015 Results: 9000 candidates score zero or negative

CAT 2015 Results announced by IIM-A has revealed that about 9000 candidates have either scored zero or negative marks in the coveted MBA entrance exam. This year, a total of 1,79,602 candidates had appeared for the exam out of 2,18,664 applicants. The CAT 2015 Results were announced via text SMS to the mobile number of registered candidates on January 8.

According to the number of test takers shared by IIM Ahmedabad, which conducted CAT on behalf of all IIMs this year, the detailed score cards carry more details on sectional scores of all candidates.

The CAT 2015 official results data available with Careers360 suggests that candidates who left their answer sheet blank came out with an overall 5.01 percentile. This means that any candidate with less than 5 percentile would have scored zero or negative scores. One of such candidates shared her text message with Careers360. “Dear Candidate, your percentile for CAT 2015 for application number 50003013 is 5.01,” read the SMS text received by the candidate. 

Statistically, with a total of 1,79,602 candidates taking the coveted exam this year, the number of candidates below 5 percentile is a little less than 9000.

Though the number of candidates scoring zero or negative marks has reduced significantly over the years, experts suggest that 9000 candidates scoring in negative is still a worrying signal for IIMs and CAT exam pattern.

In the year 2013, a total of 1.74 lakh candidates had appeared for CAT 2013. The CAT 2013 Results, however, showed that 95000 of those appearing for CAT either scored zero marks or obtained overall negative marks. 

CAT Registration Number Dip Over Years
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On the basis of the CAT 2015 Result, all 19 IIMs will announce the shortlist of candidates based on their admission criteria and CAT 2015 cutoff. The shortlisted candidates have to appear for Written Ability Test and Personal Interview rounds.  Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is the online testing partner of CAT 2015.

Normalization and Shortlisting at IIMs:

According to the normalization process announced by IIM-A officials, the scores of CAT 2015 results have been adjusted for location and scale differences of score distributions across different test forms. Besides normalization across different forms, the result prepared for CAT 2015 has been further normalized across different sections and the scaled scores obtained by this process have been converted into percentiles. The same percentile will be used as final results for shortlisting by IIMs and other top B-schools accepting Cat scores in India, IIM officials said.

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