Over 22,000 candidates scored 100 percentile in the Common University Entrance Test (CUET)-UG in various subjects, the maximum of them in English followed by Biology and Economics, in results declared on Saturday.
The National Testing Agency announced the results for CUET-UG, the second-largest entrance exam in the country. Over 11.11 lakh candidates had appeared for the second edition of the crucial exam.
According to NTA, 22,836 candidates had 100 percentile score this year compared to 21,159 last year.
While 5,685 candidates scored 100 percentile in English, 4,850 candidates got a top score in Biology/Biotechnology/Biochemistry, followed by 2,836 in Economics.
"The performance of every candidate has been evaluated using the equi-percentile method wherein normalised marks of each candidate have been calculated using the percentiles of each group of students in a given session across multiple days for the same subject," said Sadhana Parashar, Senior Director, National Testing Agency (NTA).
"The role of the NTA is confined to the registration of candidates, the conduct of the test, hosting of answer keys, inviting challenges, finalising answer keys, preparing and declaring results, and hosting scorecards.
"A merit list will be prepared by participating universities and organisations. The universities will decide about their individual counselling on the basis of the scorecard of CUET (UG) - 2023 provided by NTA," she added.
The CUET-UG is the second-largest entrance exam in the country in terms of the number of applicants. In its first edition, 12.5 lakh students had registered for the exam and 9.9 lakh had submitted their applications.
This year the exam was conducted in nine phases between May 21 and July 5 and unlike last year, it was held in three shifts.
University Grants Commission (UGC) chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar, who is coordinating CUET with NTA, said that the agency involved 2,200 subject experts and 800 translators in preparing 2,305 question papers and 1,48,520 questions this year.
"In subjects such as Accountancy, Biology, Business Studies, Economics, English, History, and Political Science, more than 1000 students got 100 percentile scores.
"NTA will provide normalised scores to the 250 participating universities. They can use these scores to prepare the merit list for admission to UG programs," he said.
Like last year, Humanities and Commerce subjects had more than 100 percentile scores than science subjects, excluding Biology. For instance, in mathematics, 251 students were in the hundredth percentile, while in Physics, this number was 83 and in Chemistry 233.
While the exam was conducted in 13 languages, the maximum number of candidates took the exam in English followed by Hindi.
Explaining the rationale for the normalisation of CUET-UG scores, the UGC Chief said, "What is important to note is that CUET-UG has been conducted over a period of 6 weeks with tests in a given subject held on different days.
"So naturally the question that arises is how are we going to compare the performance of different students on a common scale since they have written the test in the same subject but on different days.
"We need to ensure that the admissions are made based on a score that accurately compares the performance of the students," Kumar said.
Asked why normalisation is done for CUET-UG and not all entrance exams, he said unlike CUET-UG, other entrance examinations are limited to fewer subjects.
"In single session entrance tests, one common statistically established method is to transform the raw marks into a common uniform scale using the percentile method so that the performance of students can be compared to each other.
"But in entrance tests such as CUET-UG, since the test is conducted on different days and in multiple sessions for the same subject, it will give rise to multiple percentiles for each group of students.
"In addition to the above difficulty another problem with using only percentiles is that in subjects such as Sports or Fine Arts, some weightage is given to the skill component by some universities," he said.
In the equi-percentile method, the percentile for each candidate is calculated using the raw marks of the candidate as compared to the raw marks of others in the same session.
This is done for every session across multiple days for the same subject. These percentiles are then equated and converted into normalised marks. Sessions with smaller number of candidates are clubbed with bigger sessions.