Why There Is No Single Fixed Cutoff
IOQM's purpose is to select a fair, representative pool of students to sit INMO — not simply the top scorers nationally, regardless of where they're from. Because participation and access to olympiad training vary significantly across India, HBCSE sets region-wise cutoffs so that strong students from every part of the country get a genuine chance to qualify, rather than the results being dominated by a small number of regions with the most established coaching ecosystems.
How the Cutoff Is Actually Determined
The cutoff for a given year depends on how the full pool of students performed on that specific paper — a harder paper year tends to produce a lower cutoff, an easier paper tends to produce a higher one. This is a common feature of well-designed selection exams: the goal is to select a consistent number of qualifiers each year, not to hit a fixed score threshold regardless of difficulty.
Why Aiming at "Last Year's Cutoff" Is a Risky Strategy
Since the cutoff moves with each year's paper and each region's specific pool, treating a previous year's cutoff as a fixed target is unreliable — a student could clear a self-set target based on an old cutoff and still miss qualification if that year's paper or regional pool shifts the actual bar higher.
A Better Way to Think About Preparation
- Aim to maximize genuine, correct answers across all 30 questions rather than a specific target number — since IOQM has no negative marking, every additional correct answer directly helps regardless of where the cutoff lands.
- Track performance relative to your own region's historical qualifiers, if that information is available, rather than a single national number.
- Treat the cutoff as something that will only be known after the exam, and prepare to perform at the strongest level you genuinely can, rather than preparing to "just clear" an assumed number.