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CAT score vs percentile: what the results data actually shows, year by year

How many people take CAT, how many hit 100 percentile, and what a percentile means in head-count terms, for CAT 2022 to CAT 2025.

By Team GRADSKOOL · 15 Nov 2026 · 2 min read

Search for "CAT score vs percentile" and you will find dozens of tables mapping a score to a percentile. None of them are official. The IIMs do not publish a score-to-percentile table; every version online is an estimate compiled from candidates' self-reported results.

What the IIMs do announce each year is the scale of the exam and how many candidates reach the very top. That is enough to understand what a percentile means.

CAT results, year by year

ExamConducted byRegisteredAppeared100 percentile99.99 percentile
CAT 2025IIM Kozhikode2.95 lakh2.58 lakh1226
CAT 2024IIM Calcutta3.29 lakh2.93 lakh1429
CAT 2023IIM Lucknow3.3 lakh2.88 lakh1429
CAT 2022IIM Bangalore2.55 lakh2.22 lakh11not reported

Figures are as announced by the conducting IIM at result time and reported in the press coverage linked below.

What a percentile means in people

A CAT percentile tells you what share of test-takers scored below you. Using the CAT 2025 figure of about 2.58 lakh test-takers (our arithmetic, rounded):

PercentileRoughly how many candidates at or above this level
99.9about 260
99about 2,600
95about 12,900
90about 25,800
85about 38,700

This is why the same raw score can map to a different percentile in different years: the percentile depends on how everyone else in that year's exam performed, and on how many people sat it.

Why this matters for shortlists

IIM shortlisting cutoffs are set in percentiles, not scores. For example, a minimum of 90 overall means a candidate has to be roughly in the top 10% of that year's test-takers just to be eligible. See the official minimum CAT cutoffs for IIM A, B, C, L and I.

Sources