In order to create a level playing field for students in JEE Mains, the National Testing Agency (NTA) calculates scores on the basis of 'Normalization procedure based on Percentile Score'. The procedure ensures that candidates are neither benefitted nor suffer due to the difficulty level of the examination.
An official notification the JEE Main website read, "NTA may conduct JEE Mains on multiple dates. The candidates will be given different sets of questions per session and it is quite possible that in spite of all efforts to maintain equivalence among various question papers, the difficulty level of these question papers administered in different sessions may not be exactly the same. Some of the candidates may end up attempting a relatively tougher set of questions when compared to other sets. The candidates who attempt the comparatively tougher examination are likely to get lower marks as compared to those who attempt the easier one. In order to overcome such a situation, a 'Normalization procedure based on Percentile Score' will be used to ensure that candidates are neither benefitted nor disadvantaged due to the difficulty level of the examination"
Percentile scores are marks based on the relative performance of all the candidates who appear for the examination. The marks obtained are transformed into a scale ranging from 100 to 0 for each session of examinees.
The Percentile score of a Candidate is calculated as follows:
100 X Number of candidates appeared in the ‘Session' with raw score EQUAL TO OR LESS than the candidate/ The total number of the candidates who appeared in the 'Session'
Steps for normalization procedure
Step 1- Candidates are first distributed into two sessions (in case the exam is held on a single day) randomly so that each session has an approximately equal number of candidates. In the event of more number of days or less number of shifts, the candidates will be divided accordingly.
Step 2- The examination results for each session will be prepared in the form of raw scores and percentile scores of total raw scores.
The Percentiles would be calculated for each candidate in the Session as follows:
Let TP1 be the Percentile Score of the Total Raw Score of that candidate.
Total Percentile
(TP1) : 100 X No of candidates appeared from the session with raw score EQUAL TO OR LESS than the score of the Candidate /Total No of candidates who appeared in the session
Step 3- The Percentile scores for the Total Raw Score for all the sessions (Session-1: Day-1 Shift-1, Session-2: Day-1 Shift-2) as calculated in Step-2 above would be merged and shall be called the NTA scores which will then be used for the compilation of results and further processing for deciding the allocation.