Hello Mam/Sir I secured 554 rank in APPGECET 2020 in mechanical. I belong BC A caste and i am from Hyderabad. Are there any chances to get into top universities in thermal stream ? and also is there any difference in seats for local and non local or the seat allotment purely depends on rank ?

Hello aspirant,

Congratulations for securing a good rank in pgecet. You want to pursue M.Tech in Thermal Engineering.
I would like to inform you that JNTU Anantapur, JNTU Kakinada, SVU college of engineering Tirupathi and AU Vishakhapatnam do not offer Thermal Engineering course in M.Tech .
Maximum colleges offer machine design course.
But there are few colleges affiliated to JNTU Kakinada Which provide Thermal Engineering.
Below I have listed the colleges along with their cutoffs. These cutoff ranks are for BC_A category for thermal engineering.

B V CHALAMAIAH ENGINEERING COLLEGE - 634

GAYATHRI VIDYA PARISHAD COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING - 1184

PYDAH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING - 4006

SANKETHIKA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT - 671

GOKUL GROUP OF INSTITUTION - 5653

DJR COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECH - 5120

From the cutoff ranks it is clear that you can get a seat in any of these colleges.
Now coming to your question about local and non local seats, 85% seats are reserved for local candidates and the remaining 15% seats are unreserved. Seats are alloted on the basis of pgecet ranks.

For more information on PGECET you cna visit the following link:

https://engineering.careers360.com/articles/ap-pgecet-eligibility-criteria

All the best!