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Firstpost released this article which consists of the scorecard of a person who did not attempt a single question in CAT 2013. According to this person's score, in his slot (please note in his slot) - A score of ‘0’ in QA and DI equals 53.61 percentile and the same in VA and LR puts a candidate on 57.23 percentile. The overall percentile for a candidate scoring zero in both the section is 55.46 percentile.
Now, compare the table above with the scores here. Incredible, isn't it?
Now, score of 0 translating to a scaled score in one slot is not equal to score of 0 translating to a scaled score in another slot i.e. the scaled score and percentile will differ as normalization will be done for difficulty across various slots. However, the variation is unlikely to be very large. The only way to know this is if we have scorecards of every person who got a zero in each slot. (It is possible that in the future coaching companies will send one person in each slot to do just this and check for a sure shot way to get a call if one hails from specific categories.)
The problem is not with the CAT. The problem (if perceived as a problem at all) is with the abysmally low standards set by the IIMs to admit students in the reserved categories. Our suggestion has been that those seats should go empty rather than filling them in this fashion. We argued it here last year - Now, Get IIM tag at 45 Percentile. The numbers are unlikely to be significantly better at some old IIMs either. For e.g. IIM K's 1st stage shortlist cutoffs for SC/ST/PWD candidates are 40, 40 and 55. At IIM Indore they are 50,50 and 55.
This also shows how poor we have been as nation to solve basic problems of education for all sections of the society.
