Normalised scores in CUET disregard difficulty level of different subjects, say students

Many aspirants to Delhi University say the system doesn’t provide a fair comparison but admissions officials say that scores are better as percentiles cannot be added.

The marking scheme used in the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) has left several students anxious. One of the apprehensions expressed by the students is that the “normalisation” of marks doesn’t allow for a comparison between two different subjects, which puts the students who appeared for Maths and Physics, as well as Hindi, at a disadvantage.

Sejal Singh, a student who aspires to join Delhi University, said, “I am applying for B.Sc. (Honours) in Maths at Delhi University and I have 96 percentile in Maths converted into 115 marks. As I am from Science background, my second subject is Physics in which I have 99.8 percentile converted into 168 marks.” She added, “But another student from Commerce background who applied for the same course and appeared for Business Studies instead of Physics has a lower percentile of 91 turned into 174 marks. This means that my competitor has more marks than me even though I performed better in a tough paper.”

She claims that despite having scored 97.7 percentile, she has an overall score of 631 out of 800, while many Humanities students with lower percentile scored more than 700 marks. According to the eligibility criteria laid down by Delhi University for different courses, students need to submit their best score in three or four subjects depending on the programme they are applying for.

University Grants Commission (UGC) chief M. Jagadesh Kumar last week said universities across the country would prepare merit lists for undergraduate admissions using “normalised” scores issued by the National Testing Agency (NTA) instead of raw marks.

“Normalisation” is a way to compare the marks of one student with another when an examination in the same subject is held in multiple sessions, each with a different paper, to ensure equity. Essentially, what this method does is that for a given percentile value it calculates the average of the corresponding scores on different days. If in a given shift no student secured a specific percentile value, then linear interpolation is used to give a corresponding score for the missing mark.

However, many university aspirants say a normalised score doesn’t provide a fair comparison between two different subjects and therefore percentiles would have been a better parameter.

Archisha Nigam, who plans to pursue B.A. (Hons) in Political Science at Delhi University, says, “Science students have been put at a disadvantage as they have lower scores despite higher percentile and will be penalised when they change streams and face competition from students from Humanities or Commerce.”