New Delhi: Central universities across the country will compile rank lists based on CUET UG results. They will, however, not prepare a merit list based on percentile or raw marks, but rather on "normalised" scores issued by the National Testing Agency (NTA).
Here are some specifics about the normalisation process:
Why is the normalisation process required?
CUET UG 2022 was held in multiple shifts for several subjects. Because the question paper for any subject differs in different shifts, it is possible that the difficulty level of these question papers administered in different sessions will not be the same or comparable.
Some of the candidates may have attempted a more difficult set of questions when compared to others. Candidates who took the more difficult examination are likely to receive lower marks than those who took the easier one; however, the scores of students across shifts are not directly comparable. To make such comparisons possible, the scores must be normalised across shifts.
How was the method of normalisation chosen?
To arrive at the methodology, a committee led by a senior professor from the Indian Statistical Institute Delhi and comprised of senior professors from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, and the University of Delhi held detailed deliberations.
Why cannot percentiles be used to determine rank?
Because CUET UG is administered on different days and in multiple sessions for the same subject, each group of students will receive multiple percentiles. Aside from the complications mentioned above, another issue with using only percentiles is that some universities give some weightage (e.g., 25%) to the skill component in subjects such as sports or fine arts.
However, adding raw marks in the skill component and the remaining weightage (75% of percentile) cannot be done to prepare the rank list because it would be equivalent to adding oranges to apples.
What is the equi percentile method?
NTA uses the same scale for all candidates regardless of which session they appeared in a given subject, allowing their performance to be compared across sessions.
These marks obtained by candidates in different sessions in a given subject using the equipercentile method can be used in the same way as raw marks obtained in a traditional single session examination.
As a result, if the raw marks of the skill component have a certain weightage at a particular university, they can be added to the remaining weightage of the normalised marks to prepare the rank list.
5. Why isn't normalisation implemented in all NTA entrance exams?
Other entrance examinations, unlike CUET UG, cover fewer subjects. One common statistically established method in single-session entrance tests is to transform raw marks into a common uniform scale using the percentile method so that students' performance can be compared to one another.
