India, Nov. 6 -- Nearly 2,972 high-scoring students in Maharashtra have opted out of engineering admissions this year, despite strong performance in the state's Common Entrance Test (CET), according to a report by the State CET Cell.

This year's CET, conducted for admissions to engineering colleges across the state, saw 22 students achieve a perfect 100 percentile, while 43,299 scored between the 90th and 99.99th percentile. However, only two of the 22 toppers chose to enrol in state engineering colleges. The remaining 20 reportedly secured seats at Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) through their performance in the JEE Advanced exam.

The data shows that even among students scoring 95-100 percentile, as many as 1,322 did not partici...