The only major disadvantage of not being in a Tier-1 college is the lack of access. By access I mean

• Top companies might not come to your campus

• You might not have access to thriving alumni network

Now let’s see how these can be tackled. Since you mentioned placements, I’ll focus purely on the job aspect.

1. Focus on learning the basics. If your teachers aren’t good, watch NPTEL and MIT OCW videos. They’re available on Youtube and other platforms. This will give you a good foundation. Do it for the love on CS and because you want to be a good engineer. Getting placed is just the beginning. Strong understanding of basics is what’ll help you excel at work.

2.Become good at competitive coding. Pick a platform, Hackerrank/Codeforces/CodeChef etc. Stick with it and practice daily. DAILY.

3.Don’t give up on point 2. This is the only thing that’s going to place you into the Amazon/FB/Googles of the world. Their interviews are 90% algorithmic in nature.

4.Figure out the basics of professional software development like Git, CI/CD etc

5.Try for GSoC. Understand what it takes to get accepted and make sure you do. They have a wide variety of open source projects. This will help your portfolio. You’ll also learn the ropes of professional software development.

6.Do internships. Your focus should be to gain as much real world SW development exposure as possible. Start-ups focus a lot on this (Point 5 & 6). Unlike big MNCs, startup hiring process rewards hands on work-experience more than algorithm interviews.

7.Pick up a framework(web/app dev) and become good at it.

8.Make a nice well formatted resume. PLEASE. Look up for some good templates online and use them. It should always be a 1-pager.

9.Learn to thrive in ambiguity. Prioritise your work load. Don’t give up

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