CAT 2020 percentile prediction – this is going to be the buzzword in the CAT realm tomorrow as the response sheet and the answer key get released officially on the IIMCAT website.
The frenzy should ideally end with students logging in using their respective credentials, downloading their score card, calculating the right and wrong responses manually and arriving at their scores. But, hold on! ‘Ideally’ is the word to be noted there, isn’t it?
The ideal vs. the actual
CAT every year is a high-pressure examination for most, if not all aspirants, and CAT 2020 was no different. In addition to the usual panic, there were also certain aspects that remained uncertain until the last moment, shrouding what the actual exam entailed until the examination started. It was an enigma of sorts, taking its course.
All that brings us to the actual scenario.
Which is?
The want to know the magic number – the percentile. Though all aspirants, CAT gurus and experts invariably know that nobody can predict the percentiles exactly, at an individual level they do something.
In comes percentile predictions!
Anybody who is even remotely familiar with the response sheet and answer key release would know what would happen across several reputed and “reputed” CAT platforms. They would be screaming, “CAT 2020 Percentile Predictions! Input your scores and get your percentile.”
What is the problem with CAT 2020 percentile prediction?
At 2IIM, we had a long debate yesterday about the impending happenings once the answer key and response sheets are ready.
On one side of the debate were people who wanted the CAT 2020 percentile prediction; on the other side were those who opposed the idea with the fullest vigour.
The arguments on CAT 2020 percentile prediction go thus…
The tech wizards and coding geeks at 2IIM said if there was a need, they could always get that ready. So, it was not a question of capability. The necessary ground work was almost ready, and it was just a matter of time before we decided whether to go ahead with it or not.
Let us see the arguments of both sides and finally see what our conclusion was. Rajesh played the Devil’s Advocate, pestering and prodding both sides to come up with more and more arguments to justify and substantiate their stances.
People at 2IIM who wanted 2IIM’s own CAT 2020 percentile prediction tool
The argument put forth by those who were for our own CAT 2020 percentile prediction tool/webpage was that aspirants would go to some other provider who offers the prediction, in any case. Whether the predictions are valid, accurate or not could be an argument for yet another day. But the bottomline is, if the aspirants are going to visit some unreliable source to guesstimate their percentiles, we could do a better job at that.
The advantage to the aspirant is that they would be at peace knowing they scored xx.xx percentile (or they would think they did, although nothing about the percentiles would be certain until the official results come out). The aspirants would then be better placed to make a decision to know what their next steps should be – WAT/GD/PI round preparation, XAT 2021, MICAT 2, NMAT, applying to several B-schools… the list goes on. And on and on.
We are not going to misuse any data. In fact, let us not make them upload their response sheets. Let us only give them the option to copy-paste the URL of their response sheet from the IIMCAT website itself. Let us be transparent and inform the aspirants that this might not be their actual percentile, and that this is just our predictions. They need not submit any personal details – be it name or mobile number or email ID. These are data some “reputed” platforms use at a later point in time for cold calling and business purposes. We will stay away from these practices.
The aspirants can make an informed choice, just like how we respond to block ads and cookies in a lot of websites, OR choose to use a privacy-oriented browser.
People at 2IIM who opposed the idea of 2IIM’s CAT 2020 percentile prediction tool
There is a clear distinction between why people seek our blogs, website and announcements over certain “reputed” websites that peddle speculations and unverified information without a tinge of guilt. Clickbaits, data collection and cold calling form the basis of their existence. We have incessantly, intentionally stayed away from anything and everything that we deemed even borderline unethical in principle (remember, there are these kinds of questions in the XAT BDM section).
At an individual level, an aspirant is more likely to get thrown off by a percentile prediction. An analysis of Slot 1, Slot 2 and Slot 3 with rough guesstimates – read, ballpark score requirements for various percentiles – is totally different from an individualized percentile predictor. The former, when compared with the scores as per the response sheet, can give a sense of where the particular aspirant stands. They could be at 95-97 percentile, OR 90-93 percentile, OR 97.5-99 percentile. The latter, in contrast, gives an exact number pinned to the score, rounded off probably to two or three decimal places.
While one could argue that the individual percentile prediction could be precise or accurate or both, there is a high likelihood that some section of the CAT 2020 takers who end up at our percentile predictor could be disappointed.
This could be for a variety of reasons – missing a sectional cutoff, not getting a percentile that they expected – while, in reality, this is not even real until the official result gets released.
Which is against our idea of reiterating, “CAT is just another exam. There are entrepreneurs and managers who have made it big in life without doing an MBA. In any case, CAT score alone could not be the determinant in an aspirant getting an interview call from an IIM.” We (have to) practice what we preach, and we have always stuck to our ethics.
While ‘informed choices and decision making’ is an easily uttered jargon these days – platforms like Google, Facebook and others that thrive on user data keep repeating this – there is an implicit manner in which a user could be made gullible.
At the end of the day, even if an aspirant is happy seeing their percentile, it is just speculative. We could be near perfect, but we can never be sure. Let us not do this.
The verdict on the CAT 2020 percentile prediction
We at 2IIM are NOT going to do percentile predictions at an individual level. The arguments on both sides were quite powerful, with each side passionately substantiating their claims. But at the end of the day, informed choice or not, it is a grey area.
We have
- NEVER misled CAT aspirants
- NEVER given any false hope
- NEVER peddled any information that we could not verify firsthand
- NEVER intended to depress or disappoint any CAT aspirant
2IIM CAT Preparation stands tall not because of the coffer-brimming VC-funded money but because of our credibility. We have gained the trust of lakhs of CAT aspirants across the country purely through our values – honesty and integrity. We will never do anything that goes against our core principles.
CAT 2020 aspirants will get to see 2IIM’s Online Score Calculator, but NOT the CAT 2020 percentile predictor.
(Note: Bookmark this page and visit it after the answer key is out. We will update this article with the URL to our score calculator.)
Here is the link to 2IIM’s Score Calculator: https://online.2iim.com/CAT-score-calculator
Written by Giridharan Raghuraman
Leave a Reply