Bengaluru: It was a nail biting wait for most as the CAT results, expected by midnight on Wednesday, were released three hours later at 3 am. Although the city has 157 students with 99 percentile or more — a tally beaten only by New Delhi with 168 and Mumbai with 180 — a lot of the students seemed disappointed with their performance.
Students who managed a percentile of over 99 in 2011, found themselves looking at about 75 this time. “The result I got was lower than I expected”, said Ravi S, who spent the last year preparing for CAT.
“The IIMs use a process called normalisation to calculate percentile, the actual raw score doesn’t count. The mock test results haven't been reflected in the finals. This is the most common complaint I’ve heard”, said Mr Sai Kumar Swamy, Centre Director, T.I.M.E, a prominent coaching centre.
The CAT, which is conducted over a 30-day period, provides different question papers, all of which, it is claimed, are uniformly difficult. The boys outshone the girls this year, and 10 students from the country managed to score 100 percentile. Among the girls the highest percentile was 99.99, scored by four from Karntataka, Orissa, Delhi and UP. As many as 255 girls and 1640 boys scored more than 99 percentile. Candidates from a medical background managed percentiles of 99.97, and those with Commerce and Economics backgrounds, 99.95. Those from Arts and Humanities lagged behind with 99.6.
CAT 2012 saw a marginal increase in registrations. which is significant considering that there was a one-third fall in registrations in 2008. The test itself was designed and evaluated by Prometric. A total of 191,642 candidates appeared for the 21-day long test held from October 11 to November 6, 2012.