Students aiming for top management schools through the CAT 2025 exam should target around 21 correct attempts to achieve a 95 percentile score. The Common Admission Test (CAT) 2025 is scheduled for November 30, 2025 . To reach the 95 percentile, candidates usually need to score between 63 to 65 raw marks .
This information helps students plan their study and exam strategy. Knowing the number of questions to attempt and aiming for high accuracy is important for success in this national-level entrance exam.
What is CAT?
The CAT exam is a very important test for students who want to get into top management colleges in India. These colleges are also known as Business Schools or B-schools. The most famous ones are the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) . Many other good colleges also accept CAT scores.
CAT tests a student's skills in three main areas: understanding written passages and language (Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension or VARC), solving math problems (Quantitative Ability or QA), and logical thinking and data interpretation (Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning or DILR).
Understanding 95 Percentile
When you get a 95 percentile in CAT, it means you have performed better than 95 out of every 100 students who took the exam. For example, if 2 lakh (200,000) students take the exam, scoring 95 percentile means you are among the top 10,000 students. This score is often needed to get into the best colleges.
The exact score needed for 95 percentile can change a little each year. It depends on how difficult the exam was and how well other students performed. But based on past exams, a score of 63 to 65 marks generally leads to a 95 percentile.
How CAT Scores Work
In the CAT exam, marks are given for correct answers and marks are cut for wrong answers. For most questions, if you answer correctly, you get 3 marks . If you answer incorrectly, 1 mark is deducted from your total score. There are some questions where no marks are deducted for wrong answers, but these are usually a specific type of question (non-MCQ or TITA questions).
This system means that guessing answers can reduce your score. It is better to attempt fewer questions with high accuracy than many questions with low accuracy.
Target Attempts for 95 Percentile in CAT 2025
To reach a 95 percentile , students should focus on a specific number of attempts across all three sections. The table below shows the overall target attempts and expected score:
| Overall Percentile | Expected Overall Score | Total Number of Attempts (with high accuracy) |
| 95.0-95.5 percentile | 63-65 | 21 |
This table shows that to get 63-65 marks, you should aim to correctly answer about 21 questions . This calculation assumes a very high accuracy rate.
Accuracy is Key
Simply attempting many questions is not enough. The accuracy of your answers is very important. Let's look at two examples:
- Example 1: High attempts, low accuracy
A student attempts 40 questions . If their accuracy is 60 percent , they answer 24 questions correctly (24 x 3 = 72 marks) and 16 questions incorrectly (16 x -1 = -16 marks). Their total score would be 72 - 16 = 56 marks .
- Example 2: Fewer attempts, high accuracy
Another student attempts 28 questions . If their accuracy is 90 percent , they answer about 25 questions correctly (25 x 3 = 75 marks) and 3 questions incorrectly (3 x -1 = -3 marks). Their total score would be 75 - 3 = 72 marks .
As you can see from these examples, attempting 28 questions with 90 percent accuracy gives a much higher score (72 marks) than attempting 40 questions with 60 percent accuracy (56 marks). This clearly shows that getting more answers right is better than trying to answer many questions and making many mistakes.
Therefore, students preparing for CAT 2025 should focus on solving questions carefully and accurately rather than rushing to attempt a large number of questions.
