Exam Score Calculator
Most government exams take marks off for wrong answers. Enter your right and wrong answers with the exam’s marking scheme, and this works out your score, your accuracy and the gap to the cut-off you are aiming for.
How to use this calculator
- Choose your exam to load its marking scheme, or enter the marks for a correct answer and the penalty for a wrong one from the exam’s notice.
- Enter how many questions you answered correctly and how many wrongly.
- Optionally enter the total number of questions, to see accuracy and what you left out.
- Enter a cut-off to see how far you are from it, how many of your attempts had to be right to reach it, and how many attempts your accuracy needs.
How it is calculated
Your score is the marks for the correct answers less the penalty for the wrong ones. Questions you did not attempt carry no penalty.
The marking schemes held for SSC, bank, railway and UPSC exams are the ones recent notifications have stated, and are labelled as typical: schemes change between cycles, and your notification governs.
Where you enter a normalisation factor, it is applied as a flat multiplier. Conducting bodies such as SSC normalise across shifts with their own formula, so treat that figure as a rough guide.
Accuracy is your correct answers as a share of the questions you attempted — the figure that tells you whether attempting more would have helped.
With a cut-off, two more figures follow. At the number of questions you attempted, the correct answers needed are the cut-off plus the penalty on every attempt, divided by the marks a right answer is worth plus the penalty. At your accuracy, each attempt is worth a fixed number of marks on average, and the cut-off divided by that is the number of attempts needed.
Worked example
SSC CGL Tier 1 — 100 questions, 2 marks each, 0.5 off for a wrong answer: 70 right and 18 wrong give 140 − 9 = 131 marks. Against a cut-off of 140, 74 of those 88 attempts had to be right — or, at your 79.55% accuracy, 95 attempts.
Run this worked exampleQuestions people ask
Should I attempt a question I am unsure of?
On average, a blind guess among four options breaks even when the penalty is a third of the question’s marks, and gains a little when it is a quarter. Ruling out even one option makes a guess worth more — but an average hides the marks you can lose on the day.
Related calculators
- Percentage CalculatorMarks to a percentage or a percentage to marks, and whether it meets the minimum a post or course asks for.
- Marks Needed CalculatorThe marks you still need to finish at a target percentage, and the percentage that means on the papers left.
- Government Job Age CalculatorYour exact age on the notification’s as-on date, the relaxation you are entitled to, and until when you stay inside the limit.
- Physical Standards CalculatorWhether your height, chest and qualifying run meet the standard for a police, CAPF or defence post, with the relaxations applied.
Where the jobs are
Indicative only. The official order or notification governs, and every figure should be checked against it before you act on it.