The rules for qualifying marks have varied from year to year. The qualifying marks (out of 100) are different for different subjects as well as categories.
Category |
Qualifying mark (out of 100) |
General (GN) |
25 or μ + σ, whichever is higher. |
Other backward classes (OBC) |
90% of general category's qualifying mark. |
Scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST) |
2/3 (i.e., 66.67%) of general category's qualifying mark. |
- Here μ is the average (i.e., arithmetic mean) of marks of all candidates in the subject (with negative marks converted to zero) and σ is the standard deviation of all marks in that subject.
- Usually, the general category's qualifying mark is in the 25 to 50 range.
- From 2014 onward, examination for CE, CS, EC, EE and ME subjects is being held in multiple sessions. Hence, for these subjects, a suitable normalization is applied to take into account any variation in the difficulty levels of the question sets across different sessions.
- Here, qualifying marks for CE, CS, EC, EE and ME are given for general, OBC and SC/ST candiadates.