The CAT is a week away and one question we keep getting asked is what score should I target. While percentiles are all that matter, the question is not entirely invalid in terms of its relevance to setting score-based milestones to evaluate your performance during the 170 minutes come test-day. The best way to go about it though is by looking at what the numbers from this year’s SimCATs tell us. We will be looking at data from SimCAT 8 onwards from when the new pattern fully took effect.
What is the SCORE RANGE that a 99 percentile can take?
Crossing the 99the percentile overall is a pre-requisite for general category students aiming for a call from the old IIMs. So what is the range of scores translated into a 99th percentile on SimCATs 8 to 13?
A range of close to 74 marks! Even if we discount SimCAT 8 since the pattern had just changed and test-takers were yet to find their feet, the range is still 50 marks. On SimCAT 12,which was the toughest of the lot, it was was low as 127. The average score for a 99 it turns out is a 150.
Lets us look at the range at other percentile levels (excluding SimCAT 8).
| Percentile | Score Range | Average |
| 99 | 127-177 | 150 |
| 97 | 115-163 | 136 |
| 95 | 105-150 | 126 |
| 90 | 91-133 | 112 |
| 85 | 83-120 | 102 |
| 80 | 77-108 | 93 |
Sectional Scores and Percentiles
What do things look like at a sectional level at the various percentile ranges.
| Percentile | QA – DI
Score Range |
QA – DI
Average |
VA – LR
Score Range |
VA – LR
Average |
| 99 | 78-111 | 90 | 62-86 | 75 |
| 95 | 63-90 | 74 | 53-73 | 63 |
| 90 | 55-77 | 64 | 45-64 | 55 |
| 85 | 49-68 | 58 | 40-58 | 49 |
| 80 | 44-61 | 52 | 32-54 | 45 |
How Do You Set Targets For Yourself?
As you can see the score required for a particular percentile depends on the paper you get. One of the benchmarks you can use is the average scores at various percentiles as per the
data above. From the scores you can calculate the number of attempts you would need to achieve your desired percentile.
How Not To Use Target Scores
While the average for a 99 in QA-DI is a score of 90, it does not mean that on test-day, if at the end of your QA-DI section you you estimate your score to be less than 90, you panic.
Quite often test-takers go in with a number in mind and when it does not happen they panic and they end up either allotting additional time to the section thereby jeopardising the other section or go into the other section with a negative mindset and perform poorly. Once the results are out that they realize that they had in fact performed well on the section they attempted first and a good performance on the second one would have meant a 99 plus percentile instead of a 98. More importantly they might miss out on a potential FMS convert and we don’t need to tell you how much that would cost!
So use the data above only as a reference, like the average score on a particular pitch. It does not mean that if you reach the average score in the 45th over you are going to take singles in the last five overs! Nor does it mean that you give up trying to save every single and bowl yourself to victory if you end up with a score slightly less than the average score.
I know it is the last week and most of you might be neck deep in prep but go watch Interstellar some time before your test-day, just to take the weight off your shoulders and shoot off into space.
All the best!
CAT-holics 