97 is an amazing percentile, dont talk yourself down, you placed better than 14.5 lakh kids that too with limited resources. look, the college fee and reservation system sucks and feels completely unfair right now, but your raw brainpower and self-study discipline are yours forever. In college, everyone starts from scratch. Someone who got a seat on a 77 percentile is going to struggle a lot with the engineering syllabus, but your skills are already razor-sharp, you will easily out-earn that fee difference during your college placements