Why Normalisation is Important for SSC CGL Exam 2017

Dear Students, You are all preparing for govt. competitive exams and the first thing we all expect from these exam conducting bodies to ensure fair competition to all the aspirants. Recently, SSC conducted CGL Tier-1 2017 exam in 43 shifts starting from 5th August to 23rd August 2017. According to the feedback of the students, in many of the shifts the level of the exam was very easy, hence students were able to solve more questions in the given time limit. But in a few shifts, the level of the questions was lengthy and difficult. The commission needs to consider such disparity in the level of the exam and do justice to the students. Lakhs of students dream of getting a govt. job and because of the carelessness of the exam conducting authorities, Student’s dream of getting a govt. job might never get realized.

Many other exams conducting authorities such as CAT, GATE, IBPS and Railway Recruitment Board have already implemented the process of normalization of marks so that all the candidates get a fair chance in the competition. A lot of exams nowadays are being conducted in different slots. Conducting exams in different slots means, there will be a variation in the difficulty level of the exams. To cater this issue, the Exam conducting authorities undertake a normalization process. At Adda247, We will support the process of Normalization in SSC CGL Exam.

The Exam organizing committee needs to apply a suitable normalization method to take into consideration the difficulty level variations (if any) in the question papers across different sessions. The normalization process is based on a formula and based on a few other parameters as decided by the authority, the Exam organizing committee derives the formula for calculating the normalized marks for the multi-session papers. For different exam pattern, there is a different formula for normalization of marks. 

CAT Exam Authority declared “In order to ensure fairness and equity in comparison of performances of the candidates across different test sessions, the scores of the candidates shall be subjected to a process of Normalization. The Normalization process to be implemented shall adjust for location and scale differences of score distributions across different forms and the scaled scores obtained by this process shall be converted into percentiles for purposes of shortlisting.” On the question of transparency of normalization process across the multiple sessions CAT Centre 2016 states “The process of Normalization is an established practice for comparing candidate scores across multiple Forms and is similar to those being adopted in other large educational selection tests conducted in India such as Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE).”

Dear Students, let’s understand the normalization process in the simplest way. We will study three shifts of CGL exam on any given day.  We have taken the sample marks of 5 different candidates in the account. 

Now suppose, candidates of shift-1 get 80, 85, 90, 95 and 100 marks.
Candidates of shift-2 get 110, 115, 120, 125 and 130 marks.
Candidates of shift-3 get 90, 95, 100, 105, 110 marks.

As you can see the difference in the marks of candidates in different shifts because of the level of the question papers. So, we will find the MEAN of the first shift and that will be 90 marks. And we will find the MEAN of the second shift and that is 120 marks. So, the difference in the MEAN of shift-1 and shift-2 is 30. If we add 30 marks to the marks of the first shift candidates, the new normalized marks will be (80+30=110), (85+30=115), (90+30=120), (95+30=125) and (100+30=130), Which is now equivalent to shift-2 marks. Hence, shift-1 and shift-2 marks are equal now.

In the same way, we can normalize the marks of the second shift and third shift students. In the second shift, MEAN of the marks is 120, and in the third shift the MEAN of the marks will be 100, so the difference in the MEAN marks is 20, if we add 20 to the marks of shift -3 candidates, we get (90+20=110), (95+20=115), (100+20=120), (105+20=125) and (110+20=130)

Now as you can see, the marks of the shift-2 and shift-3 candidates are equal (normalized). So According to us, that is the simplest way to understand the normalization. This method is called MEAN method. We can take the mean of the marks of all the candidates of a particular shift, and compare it to the marks of other shifts candidates, and then we add the difference in MEAN to the lowest shift marks. We hope this helps to understand the process of normalization in competitive exams. We strongly urge to SSC to take cognizance of the situation and do the normalization of marks in all SSC Exams.

It is high time SSC should consider the request from all the student for “Normalisation of marks” who have fallen victim to the faulty examination system by SSC. Since many exams conducting authorities already have adopted this method to facilitate fair competition to all the job seekers, SSC should also consider the request for the same. We are with all the students in this need of the hour. At Adda247, we guide and provide complete study material for all competitive exams in India. SSC CGL Tier-2 exam will be conducted from 27 November 2017 onward. We advise you to keep preparing for Tier-2 with Adda247. If there is any doubt regarding the exam process or study material, feel free to write to us at: contact@bankersadda.com