After the exam you get to see what you answered and what was correct. Most candidates use this to compute a number that doesn't exist yet, and miss the one thing it's genuinely good for.
Short answer: the response sheet shows what you submitted, the answer key shows what was correct, and together they give you a raw score. A raw score is not a percentile and cannot be converted into one — the normalisation step across three slots sits in between. The genuinely useful thing these documents give you is a window to challenge a wrong key answer.
You will have seen the ritual. The response sheet is released, forums fill with raw-score counts, somebody posts a conversion table, and a few hundred thousand people spend a week believing a number that has no official status. Then the actual result arrives and does not match.
Here is what each document is, and what you can honestly do with it.
The questions as they appeared in your slot, and the answer you submitted for each. Your record. Says nothing about correctness.
The correct answers. Usually issued first as provisional, then as a final version after objections are processed.
Both are published on the official CAT portal and both are available for a limited period. Download and save them while they are up. If you later want to query anything about your result, the version you downloaded is the only copy you control.
Go question by question and apply the marking scheme:
Do it per section as well as in total, because the sectional picture is the more useful one. Add it up honestly — including the ones you are tempted to argue with, which is what the objection window is actually for.
CAT runs in three slots on the same day, and the slots are not equally difficult. A raw score therefore means something different depending on which slot produced it. The conducting IIM normalises raw scores against the statistics of their own slot to produce a scaled score, and the percentile — sectional and overall — is computed from the scaled score.
So there are two steps between your raw count and your percentile, and neither is published as a formula you can apply yourself. Any site offering you a raw-to-percentile conversion is giving you a guess built from previous cycles, and previous cycles had different papers and different candidate pools.
The mechanism in full is in how CAT percentile is actually calculated. The short version: your raw score tells you how you did. It does not tell you where you stand.
For a short period, the portal accepts formal challenges to a question or to a provisional key answer. There is normally a per-question fee, refunded if your objection is upheld. The amount, the mechanism and the dates are stated on the portal when the window opens.
What makes an objection worth raising is a specific, defensible argument that a key answer is wrong on the merits — the question has no correct option, or has two, or the stated answer contradicts the data given. What does not work is that the question was unfair, ambiguous in feel, or outside what you expected.
Worth knowing: if an objection succeeds and a key answer changes, the correction applies to everyone who answered that question, not just to the person who raised it. That makes a well-founded objection genuinely worth the effort, and a speculative one a waste of a fee.
As of early November 2026 the conducting IIM has not announced the response sheet, answer key, objection window or result dates for this cycle. Estimates are circulating on third-party sites and they contradict each other — by weeks, in some cases. Rather than add another guess, we will point you at the only source that is binding: iimcat.ac.in. Check it, and ignore anyone stating a confident date before the official announcement.
Once you have a raw score and a sectional breakdown, you have enough to start thinking about shortlists — but not enough to predict them, because percentiles aren't out. What you can do is useful work that doesn't depend on the number.
Read your target institutes' published selection criteria, which are institute documents and are available now. At final selection, CAT is one input among several and often not the largest one — what IIM shortlists actually use and preparing for WAT and PI cover how the weighting tends to sit. The composite score calculator lets you put your own numbers against a weighting and see what moves the total.
And if some of your applications are to institutes that run their own forms, December is when those deadlines bite. The applications that close after you write CAT covers which ones.
The percentile will arrive when it arrives. Nothing you compute in the meantime changes it.
A record of the questions as they appeared to you and the answer you submitted for each. It is released on the official CAT portal after the exam, for a limited period. It shows what you answered, not whether you were right - that needs the answer key alongside it.
The response sheet is your submissions. The answer key is the correct answers. You need both together to compute a raw score, and they are typically released at or around the same time, with the key usually issued as provisional before a final version is published.
Compare your response sheet against the key question by question, then apply the marking scheme: three marks for each correct multiple-choice answer, minus one for each incorrect one, nothing for unattempted, and no negative marking on TITA questions where you typed the answer. The total is your raw score.
No, and this is the part most people get wrong. CAT runs in three slots of differing difficulty, so your raw score is normalised against your own slot's statistics to produce a scaled score, and your percentile comes from that scaled score. Two candidates with the same raw score in different slots can end up with different percentiles.
A short period during which candidates can formally challenge a question or a provisional key answer, through the official portal. It usually carries a per-question fee that is refunded if your objection is upheld. The amount and the dates are stated on the portal when the window opens.
Only if you have a specific, defensible reason - an answer you can argue is wrong on the merits, not a question you found unfair or badly worded. A successful objection that changes a key answer applies to every candidate who answered it, not just to you, so it is worth doing properly when you genuinely have a case.
The conducting IIM announces these dates on iimcat.ac.in, and they are not the same every cycle. Dates circulating on third-party sites before the official announcement are estimates, and in past cycles they have disagreed with each other by weeks. Check the official portal.
A verified alumnus from a programme on your shortlist can tell you what their own selection process actually weighed, and what they wish they had known in December.
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