AFCAT updates

AFCAT Cutoff — How to Check

The AFCAT cutoff is the last qualifying mark for a stage, set where merit meets vacancies for each category. This page explains how Indian Air Force determines it and how to read official cutoff trends sensibly.

1. Open the result/cutoff notice on afcat.cdac.in for your stage.
2. Read the category-wise qualifying marks in the official notice.
3. Compare your score (from the final answer key or scorecard) against your category's mark.
4. Study previous cycles' official cutoff notices to understand the trend.
5. Plan the next stage or the next cycle based on where you stand against the trend.

The cutoff is where the merit list is cut for each category once vacancies are filled — it is an outcome of the cycle, not a pre-set pass mark.

The cutoff reflects merit across the counted stages for each category and post.

Vacancy count, applicant strength and paper difficulty are the levers — a harder paper or larger vacancy pool pulls the qualifying mark down, and the reverse pushes it up.

Where multiple shifts run, normalisation adjusts raw scores before the cutoff is applied, so compare normalised — not raw — marks against it.

Official cutoff notices from earlier cycles on afcat.cdac.in are the only reliable trend source — coaching estimates published before the official notice routinely miss by a wide margin.