Engineers Lead the Pack: 13 Achieve Perfect Scores in CAT 2024! Is the Gap Between Disciplines Growing?
Engineers Lead the Pack: 13 Achieve Perfect Scores in CAT 2024! Is the Gap Between Disciplines Growing? (Representational Image)
The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta announced the eagerly awaited Common Admission Test (CAT) 2024 results on December 19, 2024. CAT is one of the most prestigious management entrance exams in India, drawing in lakhs of candidates each year who aspire to gain admission to postgraduate management programs at IIMs and other leading business schools across the country.
While students from various academic backgrounds take the CAT, one might expect that candidates from commerce backgrounds would dominate the top ranks or achieve perfect 100 percentiles. However, this year, the majority of the top performers were engineers, a trend that has been consistent for several years. Although this may come as a surprise to some, engineers have consistently outperformed candidates from other disciplines in the CAT results.
Let’s take a closer look at this year’s statistics and compare them with the results from 2023 to analyze the trends and better understand the dominance of engineers in one of the most competitive exams in the country.
CAT 2024 Results: Performance by Academic Discipline
The CAT 2024 results clearly show that engineers are significantly dominating the top scorers. Out of the 14 candidates who got a perfect 100 percentile, 13 were engineers.
In the same way, engineers made up 28 out of 29 candidates scoring 99.99 percentile and 22 out of 30 scoring 99.98 percentile. Overall, 63 of the 73 top scorers were from engineering backgrounds, leaving just 10 spots for non-engineers. This underscores a consistent trend of engineering students performing exceptionally well in the CAT exam every year.
CAT 2023 Results: Performance Based on Academic Discipline
CAT 2023 results show a significant dominance of engineers among the top performers, while non-engineers had a limited presence in the highest percentiles. Out of the 14 candidates who achieved a perfect 100 percentile, 11 were engineers and 3 were non-engineers. In the 99.99 percentile category, there were 22 engineers compared to 7 non-engineers. Notably, engineers completely dominated the 99.98 percentile range, filling all 20 spots.
This trend highlights a consistent pattern of engineers performing exceptionally well in this competitive management entrance exam.
Comparison of CAT 2024 and CAT 2023 Results
A comparison of the results from CAT 2024 and CAT 2023 shows that engineers continue to lead among the top scorers, with the gap widening this year. In CAT 2024, engineers made up 63 out of the top 73 scorers (86%), whereas in CAT 2023, they accounted for 53 out of 73 (73%), indicating a significant increase in their representation.
For those achieving a perfect 100 percentile, the number of engineers rose from 11 (78.5%) in 2023 to 13 (92.8%) in 2024. Likewise, among candidates scoring 99.99 percentile, the number of engineers increased from 22 (75.8%) in 2023 to 28 (96.5%) in 2024. The disparity was even more pronounced in the 99.98 percentile range, where the number of non-engineers fell from 9 in 2023 to just 8 in 2024, while the number of engineers saw a slight increase.
This growing imbalance points to a widening systemic advantage for engineers in the CAT, raising concerns about inclusivity and the representation of various academic backgrounds in top management institutions.
