How negative marking works
In most objective government exams, a right answer earns the question’s marks and a wrong answer takes away a share of them, often a quarter or a third. Questions left blank neither earn nor lose anything. The score is the marks for right answers less the marks lost on wrong ones.
Score = right × marks − wrong × marks × share taken off
Checking your score with the answer key
When the provisional answer key is out, compare it with your response sheet and count your right and wrong answers. Enter them here with your exam’s pattern to see your expected score, then compare it with last year’s cut-off. Exams held in several shifts may normalise scores, so the final marks can differ a little.
Example
In an exam of 100 questions with 2 marks each and a quarter of the marks (0.5) taken off for a wrong answer, 70 right and 20 wrong answers give 70 × 2 − 20 × 0.5 = 130 marks out of 200.