MHT-CET Cutoff 2026: Percentile & Qualifying Marks

MHT CET cutoff is the closing percentile at which a college, branch and category stopped admitting in a given CAP round. The State CET Cell and the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) Maharashtra publish it round-wise, category-wise and college-wise on cetcell.mahacet.org, not as one fixed number. This page explains how that closing percentile is worked out for MHT CET 2026, what moves it every year, and where to check it for your own branch and college. For the full exam profile, see the MHT CET 2026 overview.

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MHT CET 2026 has no single cutoff figure. A different closing percentile applies to every college, branch, category and CAP round.

A candidate's own MHT CET 2026 result gives a percentile, not a rank or a marks total. Cutoff is that percentile compared against what each college and branch actually closed at, round by round. The mechanics behind this comparison sit in the sections below.

MHT CET does not use one qualifying score for admission. The real cutoff mechanic is a closing percentile published round-wise, category-wise, branch-wise and college-wise by the State CET Cell and DTE Maharashtra through the Centralised Admission Process (CAP).

Every CAP round produces its own set of numbers. A Computer Engineering seat at one college can close at 99.9 percentile in the Open category, and the same branch at another college can close at 92 percentile, in the same round. The percentile a candidate needs depends on four things together: the exact college, the exact branch, the reservation category, and the CAP round number.

The CET Cell labels each cutoff line with a short category code rather than a plain word. GOPENS means General/Open, Maharashtra State, home university seat. GOBCS, GSCS and GSTS mean the same seat type for OBC, SC and ST candidates. A G prefix marks a general (non-women) seat, an L prefix marks a Ladies-only seat, and codes without the G or L cover All India and other-university variants. Reading a cutoff PDF means matching your own category code to the branch and college row you want, not scanning for a single number.

Because the cutoff resets with every round, a candidate should track their target college and branch across all rounds, not just Round 1. The MHT CET 2026 exam pattern determines how raw marks convert to this percentile in the first place, and the MHT CET 2026 colleges list shows which institutes participate in CAP at all.

Category-wise cutoff means a lower closing percentile for reserved categories than for the Open category, because each category competes on its own separate merit list within the same college and branch.

The State CET Cell's official CAP information brochure for MHT CET 2026 lists these reservation categories: SC, ST, VJ/DT-NT(A), NT(B), NT(C), NT(D), OBC, SBC, SEBC, EWS and PWD, applied to Maharashtra State candidates only (Source: State CET Cell, MHT-CET 2026 CAP Admission Notice, TED-1226/C.R.07/CAP/BE, dated 2 July 2026, cetcell.mahacet.org). Maharashtra's CAP reservation structure is commonly reported as roughly 13% for SC, 7% for ST, 19% for OBC, 3% for VJ/NT-A, 2.5% for NT-B, 3.5% for NT-C, 2% for NT-D and 2% for SBC, with a further 10% EWS quota carved out of Open seats and horizontal reservations for PWD, women, defence and orphan candidates layered on top. Treat these percentages as the pattern to expect, not a confirmed figure for this page: check the current reservation table in the official CAP Information Brochure AY 2026-27 on cetcell.mahacet.org before you plan your options, since the exact percentages can be revised by government resolution.

Each category needs its own certificate at the CAP verification stage. SC, VJ/DT-NT(A), NT(B), NT(C), NT(D), OBC, SBC and SEBC candidates must produce a Caste Validity Certificate, ST candidates a Tribe Validity Certificate, and all Backward Class candidates other than SC and ST a Non-Creamy Layer certificate valid up to 31 March 2027 (Source: State CET Cell, MHT-CET 2026 CAP Admission Notice, cetcell.mahacet.org). EWS candidates must produce the Eligibility Certificate for Economically Weaker Section, in the format set by Maharashtra Government Resolution No. RAADHO-4019/P.N.31/16-A dated 31 May 2021 (Source: State CET Cell, MHT-CET 2026 CAP Admission Notice, cetcell.mahacet.org). A candidate who cannot produce the right certificate at verification is treated as a General category candidate for that round, which usually means a much higher percentile requirement.

Two quota lines cut across every category. A Home University seat is one at a college inside the candidate's own university region. An Other University seat is the same branch at a college outside it, and typically closes at a slightly different percentile. All India seats, filled through the same CAP process by MHT CET or JEE Main percentile depending on the college, run as a further separate merit list. These distinctions decide which of the coded cutoff rows in a CAP PDF actually applies to a given candidate. The MHT CET 2026 registration page explains which certificates to upload at which CAP stage.

MHT CET does not have a sectional cutoff the way some exams do. Its real, exam-specific complexity is that PCM and PCB run on entirely separate merit lists, with separate cutoffs.

A candidate who appears for the PCM group (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics) gets a percentile used only for Engineering and Technology admission through CAP. A candidate who appears for the PCB group (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) gets a percentile used for Pharmacy, Pharm.D and certain Agriculture-linked courses. The two percentiles are calculated independently and never merged into one combined score (Source: State CET Cell, MHT-CET 2026 Information Brochure, cetcell.mahacet.org). A PCM percentile cannot get a candidate a Pharmacy seat, and a PCB percentile cannot get a candidate a Computer Engineering seat.

A candidate who appears for both attempts of the same group (PCM or PCB) gets the better of the two normalised percentiles carried into the CAP merit list. However, Physics and Chemistry percentiles are never interchanged between the PCM and PCB groups themselves, even for a candidate who sat both groups (Source: State CET Cell, MHT-CET 2026 Information Brochure, cetcell.mahacet.org). A candidate targeting both an engineering and a pharmacy backup needs to check both cutoff sets separately on the MHT CET 2026 result page, not one shared table.

MHT CET 2026 marks are not the number used for admission. The CET Cell converts each candidate's raw score into a percentile through normalisation, and that percentile, not the raw score, decides the cutoff.

Normalisation exists because MHT CET runs in multiple shifts across multiple days, and no two shifts have exactly the same paper difficulty. The CET Cell's official methodology document states the percentile score "indicates the percentage of candidates that have scored EQUAL TO OR BELOW... that particular Percentile in that examination," calculated separately for each session and then merged (Source: State CET Cell, "Document on Normalization," MHT-CET 2026, cetcell.mahacet.org). Percentiles are worked out to seven decimal places specifically to avoid ties, and the topper of every session is set at exactly 100.0000000 percentile (Source: State CET Cell, "Document on Normalization," MHT-CET 2026, cetcell.mahacet.org).

Two more rules matter for how a final CET percentile is built. Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics (or Biology) and the Total score each get their own percentile, and the Total percentile is not an average of the subject percentiles (Source: State CET Cell, "Document on Normalization," MHT-CET 2026, cetcell.mahacet.org). A candidate who appears for both attempts of a group has the better of the two Total percentiles carried into the CAP merit list for AY 2026-27 (Source: State CET Cell, MHT-CET 2026 Information Brochure, cetcell.mahacet.org).

Because raw marks depend on which shift a candidate sat, a rough marks-to-percentile mapping only ever works as a broad estimate, never a promise:

This table is an illustrative pattern drawn from cross-checked coaching and admission-portal reporting on past MHT CET cycles, not an official CET Cell conversion chart. The CET Cell does not publish a fixed marks-to-percentile table, because the same raw score maps to a different percentile in every shift. Always read your own percentile from the MHT CET 2026 scorecard, and compare that percentile, not your marks, against a college's cutoff.

Closing percentiles at Maharashtra's best-known engineering and pharmacy colleges stay well above 95 percentile for Computer Engineering, IT and Pharmacy at government and government-aided institutes, in every recent CAP cycle.

Independent, cross-checked reporting on 2025 and 2026 CAP rounds converges on a consistent pattern for these institutes:

• College of Engineering Pune (COEP) Technological University: Computer Science and Engineering has typically closed above 99.5 percentile in the Open category in Round 1, with Civil and Metallurgy branches closing noticeably lower, generally in the high 97-99 percentile band.
• VJTI, Mumbai: Computer Engineering and Information Technology have typically closed near or above 99.8 percentile in the Open category, among the highest closing percentiles in the state for these branches.
• PICT and SPIT, Pune/Mumbai: Computer Engineering and IT have typically closed in the 98.5-99.6 percentile range in the Open category, slightly below COEP and VJTI.
• ICT Mumbai and Bombay College of Pharmacy, Mumbai: Leading B.Pharm seats have typically closed above 92-99 percentile in the All India/Open category, with ICT's pharmacy-linked programmes running close to strong engineering-branch percentiles.

Regional government colleges in Vidarbha and Marathwada close far lower for the same branches, often in the 85-95 percentile range for Open category Computer Engineering, and lower still for reserved categories.

Category-wise, the gap between Open and reserved-category closing percentiles is largest at the most competitive colleges and branches, and narrows sharply at mid-tier and regional colleges. An OBC candidate can expect a closing percentile a few points below the Open figure at COEP or VJTI, while an SC or ST candidate can expect a substantially wider gap, sometimes 10-15 percentile points, at the same college and branch. EWS closing percentiles, drawn from within the Open pool, usually sit close to the Open figure at premium colleges. The MHT CET 2026 colleges list carries the full set of CAP-participating institutes to check against your own percentile.

MHT CET closing percentiles have moved up gradually at the state's most competitive colleges over recent cycles, tracking rising CAP applicant numbers.

Round-to-round, cutoffs typically ease as the counselling process advances. Computer Science and Engineering at COEP Pune, for instance, has followed a familiar pattern in past cycles: a high closing percentile in Round 1 for the Open category, followed by a modest decline across Rounds 2 to 4 as higher-preference candidates move to other colleges and seats reopen. This round-wise easing is consistent across most competitive branches, though it is smaller at the very top colleges, where demand stays high through every round.

Year over year, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology branches have shown the steadiest upward pressure on cutoffs across Maharashtra's engineering colleges, while Civil, Mechanical and core branches have moved less. Cutoffs at premier institutes have generally risen by small fractions of a percentile each year rather than large jumps, because the percentile scale itself is already compressed near the top.

The MHT CET 2026 previous year question papers are a separate but related check for candidates estimating how this year's paper compares in difficulty with earlier cycles, which is itself one of the factors that moves the cutoff.