While preparing for the CAT exam, the CAT cut-off holds a lot of importance and weightage for the students.
Students are always focused on getting to know more information about the CAT exam cut-off, which will help them to have a better idea about which colleges have what parameters for their cut-off.
The CAT cutoff 2025 ensures that students set an aim in their mind of which colleges they’ll be able to reach and which percentiles they’ll be able to score if they want admission to those colleges.
All this helps the students to set an idea in their head about where they want to reach and how hard they have to prepare to reach there. Students have to keep in mind a lot of aspects while preparing, and then the CAT cut-off becomes one of those important aspects.
Various CAT Cutoffs
There are various cutoffs for the CAT exam that the students have to keep in mind. There is a qualifying cut-off for the CAT exam. Then there is a final cut-off list that is released for the exam, and then students also have to clear the CAT sectional cut-off in order to get in.
Therefore, it becomes important for the students to have good knowledge about all of these sections of the CAT exam so that they are able to prepare better.
- CAT Sectional Cutoff
While preparing for the cat exam, this is one of the important criteria that students need to keep in mind. There is a sectional cut-off for each section of the CAT exam.
Students are supposed to meet the cut-off criteria for each section of data interpretation and logical reasoning, verbal ability and reading comprehension and quantitative ability.
While the cutoff lists for various colleges and IIMs are released, there is also cutoff criteria written for each section mentioned that helps the students to prepare better and get more clarity on how they are supposed to score in each section in order to get in.
- Qualifying Cutoff
This is one more thing that students are supposed to keep in mind. There is usually a qualifying cut-off list that is released by various institutes that shortlists the students for the further process of the admission.
Usually the qualifying cutoff is lower than the final cutoff, which is released in the end.
Therefore, students have to keep in mind that they firstly have to meet the qualifying cut-off in order to feel that they can reach ahead and go beyond and match the final cut-off as well.
- Final Cutoff
Then the final cut-off list of each of the institutions that are accepting the CAT scores is released. This is the final list that decides whether the students are able to meet the cutoff percentile of the colleges as compared to their results or not.
This final cut-off decides that students will be able to get in and receive the call or mail for the other rounds of the admission process. In this way students are able to prepare, keeping in their minds that they need to meet the cutoff of the colleges that they are aiming for.
And usually the reputed institutions have a high cutoff percentile; therefore, students usually have to work extremely hard to get there.
Factors that Decide the CAT Cutoff
There are various factors out there that affect the CAT cutoff released for the current year. Usually after the CAT exam results are announced, there are various colleges that set their CAT cut-offs according to the results that are released for that current year.
Some of the reasons that usually affect the CAT cut-offs are:
Usually the cutoff is very much based on the difficulty level of the exam. When the CAT exam is considered to be difficult for the students and there is a higher chance for students to score low percentiles, then the CAT cut-off is also affected, and usually the cut-off criteria are also reduced.
Various colleges then set their cutoff percentiles a little less than the usual criteria because the exam of that particular year is tough.
The next thing that becomes extremely important for students to focus on that decides the cutoff criteria is the number of seats that are going to be available in the institution that they’re aiming for.
When there is a lot of competition between the students to get seats on merit in various reputed institutions which have only a limited number of seats to offer for the students, then the cut-off of those institutions usually goes up really high as compared to other institutions that might have more seats that the students can aim for.
Therefore, while setting a goal in mind for themselves, students should keep in mind the college or the institution that they’re aiming for and what reputation it holds.
Another important factor that usually affects the CAT cutoff is the number of aspirants who are giving the exam in that current year.
When there’s a lot more competition, there’s a higher chance of many students scoring similar percentiles, which then makes it difficult for the institutions to select the students accordingly.
Therefore, in this case also, usually the cutoff varies for different colleges. Usually when there is a lot of competition, the cut-off percentiles are also higher as compared to when the number of aspirants is lower.
Conclusion
Students invest a lot of time in their preparation for the exam. It is not easy for the students to prepare for the entrance exams that they are hoping to crack.
Students have to, really, block all the distractions away and try their level best to get all the preparation in so that they can have a solid score as well as their percentile, which helps them to meet the CAT cut-offs of various colleges and get admission.
One of the important things that students start to manifest while they are preparing for the exam is which colleges they want to aim for.
According to the college students, they also look at the previous year CAT cut-offs of those colleges, and they usually have a set goal in mind that they need to work very hard in order to meet those eligibility criteria of those colleges and get percentiles that will make them eligible to get to the further admission processes.
Therefore, students should make sure that they work in a holistic manner to get the desired CAT cutoff in 2025.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How long is the CAT exam?
The CAT exam is of 120 minutes.
- How many sections are there in the CAT exam?
There are three sections in the CAT exam.
