Common Admission Test (CAT)

Each correct answer earns +3 marks. Each wrong MCQ costs −1. Wrong TITA (Type In The Answer) questions carry no negative marking, and skipped questions cost nothing — so always attempt every TITA, but be selective about MCQ guesses.

The CAT 2025 paper (30 November 2025) had 68 questions in 120 minutes: VARC 24, DILR 22, QA 22, 40 minutes locked per section, maximum 204 marks. The same 3-section, 2-hour frame has held since CAT 2021; question counts changed across those years (66 in 2023, 68 in 2024 and 2025) and are never announced in advance.

No. There is no attempt limit and no age limit — you can appear in as many years as you like, as long as you hold (or are completing) a bachelor's degree with the required 50% (45% for SC/ST/PwD).

Yes — provisionally. You must produce your degree or completion certificate by the deadline each admitting institute sets (typically around June of the admission year). If you can't, the admission lapses.

The exam has no pass/fail and no sectional cutoff of its own — but sections are time-locked at 40 minutes each, and most IIMs set sectional percentile minimums in their admission policies when building shortlists. So a lopsided scorecard (huge QA, tiny VARC) can disqualify you from many shortlists even with a strong overall percentile.

Raw scores are first scaled across the three slots to equalise difficulty, then converted to percentiles. As an indicative benchmark compiled from the actual CAT 2025 results: roughly 85 scaled marks (out of 204) landed at the 99th percentile, about 62 at the 95th and about 51 at the 90th. These bands shift every year with paper difficulty and the candidate pool — treat them as ranges, never targets.

It makes you genuinely competitive — General-category shortlists at the top three IIMs typically land in the 98.5–99.5+ percentile band. But shortlisting is a composite score (CAT percentile plus academics, work experience and diversity factors), and final offers depend further on WAT/GD-PI. A 99-percentiler with weak Class 12 marks can miss a shortlist that a 97-percentiler with strong academics makes.

For the newer IIMs via CAP, General-category shortlists typically form in the 90–96 percentile band. FMS Delhi historically shortlists around 98–99 percentile (General) on a composite of CAT score and Class 10/12 marks. Reserved-category bands run well below these — see the cutoffs page for category-wise ranges.

Type In The Answer — questions with no options to choose from; you key the answer in directly. They appear in all three sections and carry no negative marking. Even a rough guess on TITA has positive expected value, so never leave them blank.

A basic on-screen calculator is built into the test interface. Physical calculators, phones, smartwatches and all other electronic devices are banned. Mental-maths speed (fractions, percentages, squares, approximations) is still a scored skill — the calculator is too slow for the volume you need to attempt.

You indicate preferred test cities in the application form, but the slot and final city are allocated by the conducting IIM and appear only on your admit card. CAT 2026 runs three slots on 29 November 2026 — you cannot pick which one you get.

One admission cycle. A CAT 2026 score is usable for the 2027-28 batch admissions only — there is no carry-forward to the next year.

Each institute releases its own shortlist using its published composite formula, then runs WAT (Written Ability Test) or GD (Group Discussion) plus a Personal Interview, and makes final offers. The older IIMs run their own rounds, most newer IIMs share the CAP common WAT-PI, and non-IIM colleges (FMS, IITs and hundreds of others) run parallel processes on the same score — so apply widely rather than betting on one institute.

The admit card is expected on 4 November 2026 on iimcat.ac.in. The provisional answer key and response sheet typically follow in about 1–2 weeks, and the result around late December 2026 – January 2027 (CAT 2025's result came on 24 December 2025; CAT 2024's on 19 December 2024).