Applied Maths students are being unfairly normalized against Core Maths students in CUET and nobody is talking about this
Both Core Maths and Applied Maths fall under same subject code 319 and are normalized in the same combined pool by NTA.
Here's why this is a massive disadvantage for Applied Maths (Commerce) students:
- Directly competing against JEE aspirants
Core Maths students are PCM/JEE background who score 220-240 casually. Commerce students doing Applied Maths average around 150-170. Being in the same normalization pool means your 180 in Applied Maths is competing against someone's 230 in Core Maths. Completely different preparation levels.
- Different papers, same pool
B1 and B2 are entirely different question sets after Section A. Normalizing them together is statistically meaningless — like combining Physics and Chemistry students into one pool just because they share a building.
- Shift difficulty mismatch destroys Applied students
If Core Maths (B1) comes easy in a shift and Applied Maths (B2) comes hard — the combined pool average gets pulled UP by high-scoring Core students. Applied students who performed brilliantly relative to their own peers still end up with crushed percentiles.
- Core Maths students outnumber Applied Maths students
~2.5 lakh Core vs ~1 lakh Applied in 2025. The larger Core pool dominates the normalization. Applied students are a minority being judged on a scale set by the majority.
The result:
A Commerce student scoring 180 in Applied Maths on a hard paper might get 88-90 percentile — while the same 180 in an Applied-only pool would easily be 93-95 percentile. That difference decides whether you get KMC or ARSD.
NTA needs to either normalize B1 and B2 separately or justify why combining them is fair.