The Common University Entrance Test (CUET) UG was held for undergraduate aspirants across the country from 15 July and 30 August in 489 centres. Since students had multiple subjects to choose from and each of them sat for these exams on different days, it raises the question of how the result will be calculated and on what basis will students be granted admission.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) Chairperson Jagadesh Kumar Mamidala wrote in The Indian Express that the equipercentile method will be used.
What can a student expect in their scorecard?
A student will receive their percentiles as well as their normalised marks on their scorecard.
What is the equipercentile method?
Since the test is conducted on different days and in multiple sessions for each of the subjects, the percentile method will not be used.
The equipercentile method means that normalised marks of each candidate will be calculated using the percentiles of each group of students in a given session across multiple days for the same subject.
The method will use the same scale for all candidates irrespective of which session they have appeared in. This will make their performance comparable across sessions.
The final score is supposed to indicate a candidate’s performance in comparison to others who gave the same exam.
Hence, for each exam held in multiple shifts, raw marks are converted into normalised marks on a common scale.
How will admissions be determined then?
This normalised mark across different sessions in a certain subject will then be used how board results were used to determine admissions earlier. For instance, if the raw marks of the skill component has weigtage of 25 percent, that will be added to the remaining weightage of 75 percent of the normalised mark.
The normalised marks of the candidates in different sessions in a certain subject can be used in the same way we use the raw marks of a conventional single-session examination. Therefore, in a particular university, if the raw marks of the skill component has a certain weightage (e.g. 25%), it can be added to the remaining weightage (e.g. 75%) of the normalised marks to prepare the rank list.
How are these results calculated?
First, a percentile of each group of students using their raw marks, will be calculated.
For instance, if five students have appeared for the same exam in Shift 1 and five have appeared in Shift 2, the percentile will be calculated and sorted in decreasing order.
Their raw marks will also be noted corresponding to their percentiles.
Since five of them have appeared in shift 1, and five in shift 2, the missing raw marks of each candidate in each shift will then be calculated using a method called interpolation.
Each candidate will eventually have results for both the shifts.
For each student, the average of the actual raw marks in one shift, and the raw marks obtained using interpolation in the other shift will be calculated and this will give the final normalised mark for each candidate.
How will universities admit students?
Candidates will be able to apply to universities using these marks. The universities will use the normalised result to prepare a rank list, based on which students will be admitted.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)