CAT Score vs Percentile 2025, 2024, Past Years

Success in CAT isn’t just about how many questions you get right; it’s about how your performance compares to other aspirants. The CAT score vs percentile helps you understand your rank, set achievable goals, and plan your preparation strategically. In this blog, we break down CAT score vs percentile trends from past years and guide you on targeting a 99+ percentile in CAT 2025.

What is CAT Score vs Percentile?

CAT Score (Raw/Scaled): Your raw score is the total marks based on correct and incorrect answers (+3 for correct, –1 for wrong MCQs). These scores are normalized across different exam slots to account for varying difficulty levels and then converted into scaled scores.

Percentile: The scaled score is converted into a percentile, showing the percentage of candidates you performed better than. For example, 99 percentile means you scored better than 99% of test-takers.

How CAT Marks are Converted to Percentile?

There are three stages:

• CAT Raw Score: Calculated from your answers. You can verify it using the CAT response sheets once released.
• From Raw to Scaled Score: Normalization ensures fairness across multiple exam slots with different difficulty levels.
• From Scaled Score to Percentile: Percentiles reflect your relative performance. They are displayed on the CAT scorecard for each section and overall.

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Expected CAT 2025 Scores vs Percentile

Here’s a quick reference for section-wise marks needed for key percentiles based on trends:

Expected Section-wise CAT scores VS Percentile 2025

CAT Percentile	Required CAT Score	VARC	DILR	QA	Net Qs
99.5	140	48	47	45	28
99	103	41	38	35	25
97	77	32	30	29	20
95	58	26	23	22	18
90	47	22	18	17	14
85	44	20	17	15	12
80	43	18	15	14	11

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CAT Score vs Percentile Trends for Previous Years

The CAT score vs percentile varies from year to year due to changes in exam difficulty and the number of candidates. Analysing previous years’ trends helps aspirants set realistic goals, plan better, and predict the expected score versus percentile for their target B-school cut-offs in CAT 2025.

1. Number of CAT Exam Takers from 2020 to 2024

Year	Number of Candidates Registered	Number of Candidates Appeared	Percentage increase/decrease in test takers (%)
2020	2,27,835	1,90,144	(-) 9.42
2021	2,29,969	1,91,660	0.79
2022	2,55,501	2,22,184	15.92
2023	3,23,000	2,88,000	29.6
2024	3,29,000	2,93,000	1.73

2. CAT Score vs Percentile 2024

Percentile	Marks in 2024
99.9	123
99.5	104
99	96
97	79
95	70
90	58
80	44

3. CAT Score vs Percentile 2023

Percentile	Marks in 2023
99.9	101
99.5	84
99	76
97	61
95	54
90	44
80	35

4. CAT Score vs Percentile 2022

Percentile	Marks in 2022
99.9	109
99.5	92
99	84
97	72
95	62
90	49
80	36.02

5. CAT Score vs Percentile 2021

Percentile	Marks in 2021
99.9	124
99.5	110
99	98
97	82
95	73
90	60
80	45

6. CAT Score vs Percentile 2020

Percentile	Marks in 2020
99.9	130
99.5	115
99	101
97	85
95	76
90	63
80	48

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Section-Wise CAT Score vs Percentile

Check the section-wise CAT score vs percentile trends from 2022 to 2024 in the tables below.

1. CAT Score vs Percentile 2024: Quant Score vs Percentile

Percentile	Scores
99.9	45
99.5	36
99	33
97	25
95	22
90	17
85	13
80	11
75	9

2. CAT Marks vs Percentile 2024: LRDI Score vs Percentile Trends

Percentile	Scores
99.9	50
99.5	41
99	37
97	30
95	27
90	22
85	19
80	17
75	14

3. CAT Score vs Percentile 2024: VARC Score vs Percentile Trends

Percentile	Scores
99.9	55
99.5	44
99	40
97	33
95	30
90	24
85	20
80	18
75	15

4. CAT Marks vs Percentile 2023: VARC Score vs Percentile Trends

CAT Percentile	Scaled CAT Score
100	61.66
99.99	57.32
99.87	51.02
99.5	44
99.26	41.76
99	39.7
98.21	35.88
96.72	31.47
95	28.68
93.5	26.33
90	23.39
86.43	20.66
80	17.58
75	15.27
62.28	11.53

5. CAT Score vs Percentile 2023: LRDI Score vs Percentile Trends

CAT Percentile	Scaled CAT Score
100	50.6
99.99	42.7
99.9	36.58
99.71	32.78
99.43	29.71
99.14	27.56
99	27.39
98.37	24.58
96.83	20.88
95.53	19.6
90	15.63
84.87	13.01
80	11.67
77.88	10.81
72.94	9.67

6. CAT Marks vs Percentile 2022: VARC Score vs Percentile Trends

VARC Percentile	VARC Scaled Score
99.94 %ile	52.43
99.73 %ile	45.57
99.41 %ile	41.77
98.12 %ile	35.42
97.84 %ile	34.18
95.35 %ile	29.12
93.43 %ile	26.59
90.80 %ile	24.06
83.13 %ile	18.99
77.59 %ile	16.46

7. CAT Score vs Percentile 2022: LRDI Score vs Percentile Trends

DILR Percentile	DILR Scaled Score
99.99 %ile	48.31
99.98 %ile	45.98
99.61 %ile	34.37
99.41 %ile	31.96
99.33 %ile	30.89
97.37 %ile	22.76
96.67 %ile	21.6
92.29 %ile	16.95
89.56 %ile	14.75

8. Score vs Percentile CAT 2022: Quant Score vs Percentile Trends

Quant Percentile	Quant Scaled Score
99.95	49.38
99.9	46.3
99.86	44.26
99.45	36.85
99.38	36.07
97.46	26.85
95.72	23.31
85.97	14.57
99.95	49.38
99.9	46.3

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CAT Score vs Percentile (2020–2024)

Percentile	2024	2023	2022	2021	2020
99.9	123	101	109	124	130
99.5	104	84	92	110	115
99	96	76	84	98	101
97	79	61	72	82	85
95	70	54	62	73	76
90	58	44	49	60	63
80	44	35	36	45	48

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How Many Questions to Attempt for 99+ Percentile in CAT 2025?

Out of the 68 questions in CAT 2025, attempting around 45-48 questions with 85-90% accuracy can get you a 100 percentile. Here is the section-wise number of questions to attempt in CAT 2025 to get a good percentile for your reference:

CAT Percentile	VARC questions to attempt	DILR questions to attempt	QA questions to attempt
99.5	14-16	13-15	11-13
99	12-14	11-13	10-11
95-98.99	10-12	9-11	8-9
90-94.99	8-10	8-10	7-8
85-89.5	6-8	6-8	5-7

Why Are CAT Score vs Percentile Trends Important?

With over 3 lakh candidates each year, CAT is highly competitive. Understanding score vs percentile trends helps you gauge how your raw score translates into percentile, considering exam difficulty and peer performance.

CAT scores are normalised across sessions and converted into percentiles, which B-schools use for shortlisting. Knowing past trends helps set realistic targets; for instance, scoring around 40–45% of total marks can land you in the 99+ percentile, allowing you to focus on accuracy, manage time efficiently, and reduce exam stress.

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How to Convert CAT Score to Percentile?

• Calculate your raw score: +3 for correct, –1 for wrong MCQs.
• Normalization adjusts scores across multiple exam slots for fairness.
• Convert scaled scores to percentile using:

Percentile (P)=N(N−r)​×100

Where N = total candidates, r = your rank. Round off to 2 decimal places.

This applies to VARC, DILR, QA, and the overall percentile.

CAT Score Vs Percentile: Key Differences

The table provided below outlines the key differences between CAT marks and percentiles:

Parameters	CAT Score	CAT Percentile
Nature	Absolute	Reletive
Scale	Raw	Standardized
Calculation	Cumulative scores of marks obtained in all three sections	Percentage of candidates who have scored less than you
Use	Used to determine the percentile of the candidate	Used for the final call and admission processes in Top B-schools

Also explore the CAT 2025 Answer Key

FAQs About CAT Score vs Percentile 2025 and Past Years