A final cut-off is the marks of the last candidate selected for a post in a category. If you are in that category, chose that post and scored above that mark, you would normally have been selected, subject to document checks and your post preferences.
Last selected candidate, not a pass mark
A final cut-off is not fixed before the exam. It comes out of the result: the number of vacancies, how many people sat the exam, how they scored and which posts they preferred. That is why it changes every year. For Assistant Section Officer in CSS, the SSC CGL final results show:
| Result | UR | OBC | EWS | SC | ST |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SSC CGL 2024 | 353.25 | 348.55 | 349.48 | 337.23 | 330.9 |
| SSC CGL 2025 | 331 | 324 | 327 | 311 | 299 |
A cut-off is one year's result, not a target for the next year.
Why each post has its own cut-off
Candidates are placed post by post in order of merit and preference. A popular post fills with high scorers first, so its cut-off is higher. In the SSC CGL 2025 result, the UR cut-off was 331 for ASO in CSS, 319 for Inspector (Central Excise) and 309 for Tax Assistant in CBDT.
Categories do not always line up in the order people expect. In the SSC CHSL 2023 result for LDC/JSA in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the OBC cut-off (297) was above the UR one (294). Some exams split further: SSC MTS 2024 cut-offs are by State/UT and age group, and SSC GD 2025 cut-offs for most forces are by State/UT and area.
What normalisation does
When an exam runs in many shifts, one shift may get a harder paper than another. SSC therefore publishes normalised marks, and its cut-offs are in normalised marks too. Its method works on percentiles:
- Your percentile in your shift: the share of candidates in your shift who scored the same as you or less.
- The matching score in every shift: for each shift, SSC finds the raw score at that same percentile, interpolating between the nearest scores if needed.
- Your normalised score: the average of those scores across all shifts.
So your raw score from the answer key can differ from your final marks. Only SSC has every shift's data, so nobody outside can work out your exact normalised score in advance.
Using cut-offs sensibly
- Compare like with like: same exam, same post, same category.
- Look at more than one year to see the range, not a single number.
- Check whether a figure is a stage cut-off (marks needed for the next stage) or a final one. Railway boards publish their own cut-offs, stage by stage, on their RRB websites.
What to do next
See the full tables on cut-off marks, try each step of the formula on SSC normalisation, and practise with our mock tests.