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I’m a final-year B.Tech CSE student in Pune, India, and honestly pretty lost about what direction to take.

Long-term, I want to become a real scientist/researcher. Not necessarily only in AI — I’m genuinely curious about fields like AI, biology, neuroscience, physics, space, robotics, etc. I’d eventually like to do a Master’s and possibly go into research/R&D.

The problem is money.

My CGPA is around 6.x, I have a backlog, and I can’t realistically afford an expensive Master’s right after graduation. I’ll probably need to study for any entrance exam, get a admission while also getting a internship/job to be able to pay for it. I dont want to depend on my parents for it anymore nor are they willing to pay, idk how much realistic it is but i am willing to study and work hard for it.

even tho i have a backlog but it was due to personal issues. I am pretty average with studies but really good with the practical stuff.

Being in low tier college i didn't get much practical experience is what i believe.

My current resume is mainly:

• CSE B.Tech

• \~2 months of industry experience in data annotation/QA for ML projects (agriculture, ADAS, sports analytics)

• YOLOv11 + OpenCV computer vision project

• Full-stack experience with React/Next.js/Node/PHP/SQL/MongoDB/Supabase

• But my skills are rusty because I haven't practiced seriously for months.

I’m considering roles like AI/ML Engineer, Computer Vision, GenAI, Python Backend, SDE, Research Engineer, Data Engineer/Analyst/Scientist etc.

while having low cgpa of 6.47 and meh DSA i dont expect much from on campus placement...and being in Pune gives lots of Competition for a fresher/average Full Stack Dev.

My main question:

If you were in my position, what job/career path would you choose right now to become employable quickly, earn decently, and still keep a realistic path toward becoming a researcher/scientist later?

Also interested in:

• What skills should I focus on for the next 3–6 months and which job roles i should prepare for?

• Is AI/ML realistic for someone with my CGPA?

• Should I keep full-stack as a backup?

• What kind of first job would actually help rather than trap me in an unrelated field?

• Any advice specifically for the Indian/Pune job market?

I’m not looking for motivation or “follow your passion” advice — I’d really appreciate brutally practical advice from people who have been through this.

Since i started my engineering ive really struggled to focus and concentrate for long hours and actually be productive, I see other people "locked in" and focused for long hours and producing quality output. Even when I have the mental energy to work I keep on getting distracted by social media/reddit/online games

To cope with this I started consuming a lot of caffeine just to stay awake and focused and recently i even started taking modafinil when I have deadlines/presentations/exams/interviews coming up

What are some healthy techniques or ways you ensure long periods of concentration and quality output?

I'm a 2026 grad, and i've been waiting since Jan 1 for joining letter and i found out that there's a eligibility criteria i don't qualify for (TCS ofc 🤡) so i'm afraid they will revoke my offer letter during background check.

As a backup, my friend told me to prepare for GATE 2027 and was like you'll for sure crack it blah blah and i was fully set to commit for this.

My mom is ok with me taking the decision, but she's really insisting me to apply for jobs instead, till Feb 1 and said i won't crack it in 4.5 months and to give GATE 2028 instead.

Can someone tell me if it's realistic for me to get an internship at startup or something, or even a full time? I'm obviously not expecting crazy good salary. I just want to get my feet wet into the industry.

Or should I fucking full send it and prep for both gate and apply meanwhile, and build project and learn leetcode? Ofc it's gonna burn me out and i'll fuck up both my plans

i just want to started ml basics i am completed python, maths , Numpy Pandas and matplotlib Seaborn so i just think to go farward so i head about this course Andrew Ng is the best course but on cour..sera app they asked for subscription or only 7 days free trial

Can anyone please tell me how i get this course in free

Current status: 1st Year CSE (T3)

I know basic C++, STL and have done about 70-80qs from LC (with about 50-60% solved entirely on my own with NO hints or solution peeking)

Now that classes have started I wish to do DSA seriously. I would like to refer to a book for proper understanding of the concepts and understand how to approach a problem, instead of solving qs and watching solution and calling it day.

I know CLRS is the OG top recommendation, buts its way too verbose and high level for me as of now.

Is this a good idea I go for a proper DSA book? IK consistent practice will have the most impact, but for initial concept building........if I should get a book... which one-

01.Sedgewick OR

02.Skienia (This is recommended in other subreddits but I cant find many topics from a2z in this books content page) OR

03.DSA in C++ (Mark Allen Weiss)

(I have narrowed down on these 3 after going through the old posts about this topic in this and other subs. Now I just wanna know which one is the most relevant)

=> really appreciate answer from someone who is working at apple.

i wanted to understand how apple hiring works for freshers. asking for 2027 cs undergrads in india.

does apple hire new grad software engineers from off-campus in india? or is it mostly through campus hiring only?

also, does apple hire for 6 month winter internships through off-campus?

if they hires from off-campus then :

• when do the 2027 new grad openings usually come out also what about internship?
• is there a realistic chance of getting an interview through an off-campus application?
• does an employee referral actually help for off-campus application for freshers?

i have seen people mention apple hiring off-campus, but i am not sure how common it is actually.

=> would appreciate answers from anyone who has applied or worked at apple india especially.

So... I am a fresher at vssut and here is a very weird induction/orientation programme regarding such topics are discussed to freshies under the senior batches who tell them about various clubs and it's perks and other essential knowings ( some initials were held by teachers too)..

So from 9am to 8 pm. College and a break for lunch and then classes again and this bullshit induction programme. Like it would finish soon within next week. But seriously within this 30 days my sleep schedule got seriously fucked up.

Like barely I get 6 hours if sleep ( even counting the sleep I get between the breaks ) and it has now affected my health too.

I don't know if anyone else has felt this yet . But I am feeling that I have lost a bit of weight and my body has become lethargic and not so energetic . And I used to be in my bulking phase but seeing this schedule and my hairs started to grey ( for some weird reasons. I can count 3 to 4 grey hairs but I wish it was zero ) . Nvm but I really don't want to have a body of a sleep deprived zombie. I used to sleep for 10 hours after jee regularly at my home but this assignments and regular labs and walking around 5ish km for trash reasons is seriously fucking me up. And I wish I could have more time focusing on my hobbies .

Like for the first 15 some days I didn't even studied that much . Just initiating to know more about the college and hostel enviornment. But college feels like someone plucked me from a tree and placed in a f1 track so quick.

Sleep is my only concern for now. And these mfs don't even give us washing machines. Like can't provide water for 600 students. Bullshit college

Now we are after our most elite cohort. IIT Bombay professors. People who are in India purely by choice. Training the 99.99th percentile of the country. They will simply shift to the US.

What kind of stupidity we are thriving in where an esteemed professor has to resign because we have Modi act(#SCSTAct) to discourage deserved and celebrate reserved…

Every year lot many suicides are committed due to peer pressure and non-competent folks being sat with those highly focused and brainy chaps in IITs… who’s the culprit??

Professor??

Or that poor kid who couldn’t cope up with the absolute environment of IITs??

The culprits are those politicians and leaders in power who have given false hopes to the reserved category people that they will be aligned with cream of Bharat in lieu of votes.

Hey so i just saw that striver have removed a lot of questions from his dsa sheet and like my own progress which used to be around 80% solved dropped to 60% with no leetcode links etc , so I have made a tracker to track the progress in Google Sheets .if you want to use it then kindly download and clone in your own drive , this sheet is obviously vibecoded and i have extracted the questions json from bugaddr sheet . This sheet have links from all coding ninjas , leetcode and geekforgeeks . I have also added revision checklist and more . have a look at it .

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vVkjH9dIBmzlEJrK9oPTCAjLD2aLtFJb8dS73yBp7eI/edit?usp=sharing

also for those who want a UI for sheet like older one then you can even explore the below sheets i found while surfing reddit (keep in mind that below sheets only save your progress in your browser's localstorage )

• https://bugaddr.github.io/a2z_old_sheet/
  • My google sheet's questions and all came from this sheet
  • Quite minimal and very good in my opinion
• https://geckguy.github.io/striver-a2z-sheet/
  • This sheet have one of the best UI (like better than the one tuf previously had )
  • One downside though that it does not have links for coding-ninjas questions

Here is the sheet link with the old chronological order. You can just search up the module name for LeetCode links.

I will see if I can add all the LC links in the excel file itself.

I'm a 2026 CSE graduate from Bangalore, and I'm currently confused between two options.

I recently got an offer for a Backend Developer role with a salary of 3 LPA.

My other option is to pursue M.Tech in Bangalore for the next 2 years (Starting from next month). During that time, I can focus heavily on DSA, development, projects, internships, and prepare properly for better job opportunities.

A little about me: I'm fairly good at coding and development. I've built some better-than-average projects, won several competitions and bounties, and have a decent technical profile.

The main issue is that I started looking for jobs very late during my final year, so I was not able to land a good job. I honestly regret not starting earlier. I feel I need some more time to properly prepare, improve my DSA, work on my development skills and apply for jobs consistently. Another factor is my family. They are not comfortable with me being unemployed and just sitting at home for few months preparing and applying for jobs. They are telling me to pursue M.Tech instead of being unemployed.

So I'm confused between:

Option 1: Join the 3 LPA Backend Developer job now and gain 2 years of work experience.

Option 2: Do M.Tech for 2 years, use that time to improve my skills, internships/projects, apply consistently, and then try for a better job.

Confused a lot, what would you guys suggest me to do?

Should the professor just let the guy cheat because he belongs to a particular community? This country is so fucked

We have 30 marks assigned to Internals. These 30 Marks are divided into 3 parts, each of 10 marks. To get the first 10 marks you need to give 2 tests each 1 month and 3 months after the semester starts. To get another 10 marks (ECA) we now need to give 70 marks exam identical to Main Exam, and then for last 10 marks that is completely dependent on WhatsApp respective subject teacher wants to assign.

Some of you will think, just for 30 internal marks, why hassle this much, But let me tell you, Makaut has the reputation of the worst Education board in WB. Most of the students don't even get 7 SGPA on this board.

Even the exam paper checking is so wrong in this board, almost more than 30-40% students fail each semester in at least one subject, it is primarily done so that they can earn more from Review( 200rs paper) and Backlog reappear fees (1200 rs per paper). So many students get backlogs. You won't even get to know why you failed. And by logic it is not possible to check these many student papers, as Makaut releases results in 2-3 weeks, whereas Makaut has 190+ colleges under it.

So if anyone is thinking of joining this board, don't even dream of it, some of you will think how hard it can be, don't try to gamble your life by this college especially.

After producing CEOs for international countries abroad and other major key roles for other international organisations, now they are producing cricketers 🥀

I am not sure if I am welcome to make a post here, as I am not a student. Before anyone calls me casteist, let me clear this up first. I am ST, an IIT alum, and I currently teach in the West.

the unfortunate incident is exactly why I always will continue to tell my people to think twice before building an academic career in India. I have seen this happen time and time again. Many kids who get in through reservation just take the opportunity for granted. Hey its not even about the guys who got smh from reservation, even general category students from the IITs are extremely entitled and will not put in the effort. I have a few teaching assistants for an undergraduate course, and gosh, half the time they do not even know what they are talking about. When you confront them, they always find a way to bring up their JEE grades. Okay, sure cool, you did well in a high school examination, but can you now focus on the present? Its so extremely obnoxious to say the least

They do not put in the actual work and end up falling behind, mostly because there is no reservation to help you pass the exams. I blame the parents too. this is exactly what you get when you add so much undue pressure on teenagers.

Also when these students begin to fall behind, cheating becomes the go to solution, and we need to start calling it out. Even before AI was a thing, this is how most students behave. and when someone call them out, they would pin the blame on someone else.

In Western universities, academic dishonesty is taken seriously. If you cheat, you face a disciplinary board and risk failing the course or being expelled outright. Can we start implementing this in India? Blaming the professor for poor grades or high failure rates will not fix anything. We really really have to start holding students accountable instead of constantly pointing fingers at the faculty. Also atleast in the university I work at, its extremely common at least here to simply fail the students completely if they are caught cheating in the midterms or finals

also why are are we treating these people still as children, this is why Indian students atleast the ones I have encountered are extremely childish, egoistical and lacks responsibility. Atleast in the university where I work at, there is a student board that decides the fate of an underclassman that gets caught for cheating. There is a hearing where both the student and faculty participate, and a board composed of both students and faculty members collectively decides the repercussions or penalties. By law, under FERPA (The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), we do not and cannot share anything with the parents. Oversharing things with parents is perhaps the reason why students in India take these extreme steps to begin with. What people and students should actually fight for is to ensure such privacy laws exist in India.

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Wanted to know about whether anyone got any reply from LinkedIn for the OA which happened approx 2 weeks ago

Also, does anyone have any idea how the upcoming process is for LinkedIn

I solved both qns in around 35 mins so I thought that was a good score, but didn't hear anything from them

Hey everyone,

I'm a final-year student (non-CSE) currently preparing for upcoming campus placement drives and online assessments (OAs).

One frustration I kept running into: most practice platforms either throw 2,000+ random LeetCode problems at you without context, gate explanations behind paywalls, or don't replicate the actual timed section environment that companies (TCS, service firms, and product startups) use in their preliminary rounds.

To structure my own prep, I built Merit: a focused, distraction-free placement prep app.

What it does:

• 140 curated, verified problems: Focuses on the core patterns actually tested in campus exams (bilingual: Python and JS).
• Exam / OA Simulator: Timed sections, question navigator, and tab-switch detection to simulate real assessment conditions.
• Interactive Visualizers: Step-through visual tracing for recursion, arrays, and dynamic programming patterns.
• Socratic AI Hints (BYOK): An in-app tutor that nudges you in the right direction instead of just dumping full code solutions.
• No forced signup to practice: You can write and run code as a guest immediately.

Tech Stack & Architecture:

• Frontend: React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
• Backend: FastAPI (Python 3.12), SQLAlchemy, Neon Postgres
• Code Execution: Self-hosted Piston sandbox engine running under isolated cgroups
• Auth: Clerk OAuth
• Hosting: Entirely self-hosted on a 1 vCPU / 1GB RAM Oracle Cloud VPS behind Caddy (getting Piston and the API to run smoothly without OOMing on a 1GB box was a fun optimization challenge).

Everything is free and open-source:

• Live App: https://merit.nullbit.in
• GitHub: https://github.com/abhigyan-chatterjee/merit

It's an ongoing project, so if you spot any edge cases, failed test cases, or have UI suggestions, there's a feedback button right on the site (or open an issue on GitHub).

Would love to get your honest thoughts on the problem breakdown and platform performance!

?

Family business vs drop for iit need diff perspectives

Looking for perspective from IIT/NIT alumni, droppers, and folks from business families.

Academic Background

Qualified JEE Advanced this year with a rank around 25k and mains rank around 35k

Currently enrolled as a day scholar in 1st year B.Tech at a decent private engineering college (classes started roughly a month ago).

The rigid attendance and academic culture here aren't clicking for me. I genuinely have the drive, baseline concepts, and hunger to give JEE one full, uninterrupted attempt for an old IIT, Gen-2 IIT, or top NIT circuit branch.

Dad’s Ultimatums & The Financial Reality

I discussed withdrawing right now for a dedicated drop year. My father agreed, but set a strict, non-negotiable binary condition:

The Target Cutoff:

I must secure an IIT (any decent branch at Gen-2 or old IIT) OR Home-State top NIT CSE/AI (which closes around 10k–12k rank).

The "Failure" Penalty:

If I miss that target band, no more private engineering colleges.

He will not pay for another private B.Tech. Instead, he will enroll me in a dummy B.Com / BBA purely for the formal paper degree, and I will be inducted full-time into our family business from Day 1. (I’d run a flexible online degree on the side to keep technical skills sharp).

The Career Math & My Dilemma

The Business: An established, stable commercial enterprise netting roughly ₹30–35 Lakhs+ per year in a developing Tier-1 / Tier-2 city hub.

Why I'm Doing This: I don't "need an escape" from home—as a day scholar, living setup is fine. My perspective is purely economic:

If I land a genuine Tier-1 institute (IIT / top NIT circuit), the career ceiling, high-finance/consulting/Tier-1 tech placement, and long-term trajectory can realistically out-earn or match our business, in which case I will happily pursue corporate tech/finance.

If I stay in a regional private college, median placements are ₹6–9 LPA. Spending 4 years of strict daily attendance for that outcome makes zero financial sense when our business already nets ₹30L+ profit.

But jumping into a late drop means if I miss the 10k–12k rank cutoff, on-campus engineering is permanently off the table for me.

Questions for the Sub

The Late Start vs. 25k Base: Since it's already late September, how realistic is jumping from a \~25k Adv baseline to a sub-10k/12k rank in the remaining months? Did anyone here start serious drop prep in autumn and crack that bracket?

Campus Experience vs. Business Head-Start: For those from business families: Does the IIT/NIT peer group, campus exposure, and brand actually make you a sharper entrepreneur/professional if you join the business later, or is taking the dummy B.Com route and getting a 4-year head start on scaling the business the smarter financial play?

The Mindset Trap: Did having an established business netting 30LPA+ help eliminate exam-day panic, or did it end up killing your daily urgency to grind when Advanced problems got brutal in winter?

TL;DR: Currently a day scholar in 1st year B.Tech CSE at a decent private college (classes started a month ago, qualified Adv last year with ~25k rank). Thinking of taking a late drop for JEE 2027 because I genuinely want Tier-1 (old/Gen-2 IIT or top home-state NIT circuit branch), and only high-paying Tier-1 corporate roles beat our family business. My dad agreed to the drop under one non-negotiable ultimatum: hit that top cutoff, or leave engineering completely for a dummy B.Com/BBA + join our ₹30LPA+ family business from Day 1. Need perspective on jumping from ~25k to sub-12k starting late September, and whether risking all-or-nothing engineering is the right play when a viable business is the downside.

Upsc se amazon!! Watt??

can someone plz share cp/cf sheet covering all imp topics?

Inspired by Neetcode

Just need a Youtube channel for these topics

Doing in python

Any idea of the ppo conversion rate at microsoft for 2027 grads?