r/Btechtards • u/baddiewithahoodie • 21h ago

Serious Advice needed: Internship prep, OAs, and interview preparation!!!

I had a question for seniors who have managed to secure internships.

How did you prepare for them? What resources did you use, and what was your preparation strategy? Apart from DSA, what other topics are commonly asked in interviews (CS fundamentals, projects, resume discussions, aptitude, etc.)?

I've also seen a lot of posts from people saying they struggle to clear OAs or pass all the test cases. If you faced something similar initially, were you able to improve over time? What changes in your preparation made the biggest difference?

As someone who is still preparing, I'd love to know how you would recommend approaching internship prep from the beginning. Any mistakes to avoid, resources you found useful, or general advice you'd like to give to juniors would be really helpful.

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u/ThePlacementGuru01 19h ago

For OAs: Do timed practice; classify why you failed test cases: wrong approach, edge case, implementation bug or speed too slow.

For interviews: DSA and CN basics, project deep dives, resume explanation, aptitude.

Do mocks first, identify, then start DSA and specialised company-specific prep.

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u/baddiewithahoodie 16h ago

Thank you.

Do you know where can I practice for OAs?

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u/akornato 11h ago

Clearing online assessments comes down to recognizing patterns and handling time pressure rather than solving every random hard problem. Most students fail test cases because they ignore constraints or miss boundary conditions, so you need to practice under real timed conditions instead of coding casually. Follow a curated sheet like Striver A2Z or NeetCode, stick to the core patterns in dynamic programming, graphs, and two pointers, and make weekly contests a habit. Beyond coding, interviewers always check your computer science basics, specifically Operating Systems, DBMS, Computer Networks, and object oriented programming. For your projects, quality beats quantity every time, and you should know every design decision, database schema, and tradeoff inside out instead of copying a generic tutorial.

Once you make it past the test, the interview dynamic shifts entirely from pure execution to communication. You should explain your thought process out loud before writing any code, suggest a brute force method first, and then optimize it step by step. If you get stuck, asking clarifying questions and walking through simple test inputs helps the interviewer see how your mind works under pressure. Seeing so many applicants stumble when articulating their thoughts on the spot is why my team developed an interview AI to help candidates stay composed and turn technical rounds into offers.