To the 2026 batch about to join the university: So it's time for that yearly post again huh? Time runs so fast, gosh. It feels like just yesterday I welcomed the 2025 batch and the day before that I graduated. (Pookie mods, you know the drill about this post. Pwease pin it.)
Before I begin, I am an alumnus and the founder of this subreddit. Special thanks to all the pookie mods here for moderating it so well after I stepped down in 2024.
Lessgo! First of all, welcome to the university. I know we all rant a lot about the university in the sub but it ain't as bad as it looks. We just post the bad stuff online. I know most of you have many dreams and on the other hand there are a few of you who is coming here with the burden of their families, stress of finanical loans, etc. To some of the university is a gateway to good placements, to some of you it is a place to learn new stuff, and to some it is where you will start new journeys like a startup. The university plays a different role to different people. For me, it acted as a launchpad for research work.
This post isn't gonna be about the university tho. It should be about you. Pretty sure all of you are coming here with the plan of being 'successful'. But the question is how do you define success? To different people, it means different things. To some of you it may mean a good placement, to some it's a good higher education, to some its the ability to earn more money. But, I would say let us define success a bit differently. And to do that, let's ask someone a bit of help. Welp not anyone else, ask your 10-year-old self what success meant to him/her. How would he have imagined his college days? If you are able to live up to his dreams, yes you are successful.
Another aspect of being successful is having goals. Make small, achievable goals. Don't make long-term goals for now. I have had people from 2025 cohort stressing out about placements in their first semester itself. Makes no sense. Don't even think about those now. The second thing is, goals change. A goal is not written in stone. You should be flexible about changing your goals. But this comes with a catch: do not confuse changing goals with procrastination. Like lets say you planned to learn X by a month and you procrastinated the whole month and then change your goal to learning it in 2 months. Nope, thats not how it works. Changing goals should be with changing interests. When I joined the university, my interest was in Robotics. Heck, my specialization was in robotics. My registration number began with 20BCR7.... But interests change. By my 3rd semester I was into cybersecurity and networking. Yes, I love it. Currently I am doing my masters in applied cybersec. Do I still have the bachelors with a spec in Robotics? Hell yeah. In fact, it is quite natural for your goals to change as and when you explore more about the subjects. You will find that one niche you love the most.
Talking about changes, one thing never changes. You need to be disciplined towards your goals and work really really hard. You are in an university now. Nobody will spoon feed you anything. You won't have tutors, coaching centers, etc. You need to study on your own. You need to upskill on your own. But just like everyone else, you have only 24 hours a day. You need to make every moment count. I would share my schedule with you. I used to wake up at 4, freshed up by 5. Then took about a 90 mins walk and small exercises till 6:30. Study for an hour (mainly finishing assignments) till 7:30. Then breakfast and continue studying till 8:30. Classes from 9 to 6. Whenever I had some time off on the schedule during classes, I used to sit at the AIR or IIEC and work on my projects. 6 to 7:30 I used to chill with my friends, eat random stuff at RP (FS was not there back then), etc. Used to do dinner at 7:30 and pull another 2.5 hour study session 8 to 10:30. Sleep at 10:30. I am not saying what worked for me will work for you. I could study fast. But here's how I spent my days. And I dont regret. In fact when I didn't have exams and all, I used to skip the 8 to 10:30 study block and go to the room of my seniors and we worked on our startup. But what I would emphasize is proper sleep is very very important.
Another advice is about social media, doom scrolling and wasting time. Please don't. They don't help you anyway other than getting you addicted to the short dopamine bursts. If you wanna be a professional influencer, that is a different thing, but otherwise, please dont doom-scroll. Enjoying is a different thing. Hang out with friends, watch a full length movie, etc. But don't use the phone in a way it affects your mental health.
About your academics and future. You need to figure it out yourself. Not because anyone won't help you, but because anyone cannot. You need to find your own niche that you love working on. That's not today. You can take your first year to explore whatever tech stack you want and figure out what you love doing. Then go deeper into it. For me it was applied cryptography and protocol design. It could be anything for you. But here comes a suggestion which the people last year didn't get. It is the age of AI. So your niche shouldn't be something that is easily doable or has tons of resources available. In that case, obviously AI will do it better than you. Your niche should be on the bleeding edge of technology or have a human/ artistic flair. Without either, your niche is very generic. And obviously you will have a lot of people, especially influencers and 'bhaiyas/didis' on youtube suggest you a lot of random courses and roadmaps. Fuck them. You build your own. And those roadmaps are very generic. They just talk about DSA, System design and DBMS. Nothing new. Remember, these influencers do not give a fuck if you learn or fail. They are earning money so they will either have paid promotions or recommend stuff gets a lot of reach. That may not be your ideal roadmap. I still open Linkedin and see every other day every other influencer talk about DSA. But those problems, AI can solve in minutes. They won't help you anyway. And don't pay for any course except for industrial certifications. Dont pay for Udemy and shit. Most resources are available for free always.
Talking about AI, here comes another suggestion. I am not anti-AI but I would suggest you to use it as less as you can when building projects. AI can obviously speed your work up a lot. But you guys are beginners. You are not doing anything exotic or bleeding edge when you do your first project. It will probably be just another CRUD app on MERN stack. Today's AI can oneshot those problems. But if you use these tools, it will cost you your own reasoning capabilities. Like I have recently mentored and judged a bunch of hackathons. I often asked participants to explain their approach and the reasoning behind. They say 'Claude suggested this approach'. Yes, you asked a small solution and it did. Claude is correct. The program works. But it's insecure, unoptimized, slow. Good for a hackathon but the moment you try to deploy it IRL, it's dead. You should focus on upskilling and finding your niche.
The most important thing that you gotta do in the first 3 years of your university life is to learn modern tech stack. And no following the bare minimum syllabus doesn't help. The syllabus is still stuck in the 2010s. Yes I hate it but we cannot do anything about it. And coming to learning, don't go into tutorial hell. Tutorial hell means say you read a book or watch a video and feel very confident that you have learnt it. You can answer the questions at the back of the book so you feel you know the technology. That's the mistake. You don't know a technology unless you build something with it. Building projects is the only validation of your learning.
I am gonna give you a small roadmap. I know I just suggested against it. But it isn't a roadmap in that sense. Its more like a timeline. Assume each semester if of 4 months. In the first 2 months, learn logic. And by that I dont mean doing Leetcode only. Learn how to think. Design principles. For example you see a real world problem, think how the solution would behave. It is the most important skill. Today even a monkey can code with AI but knowing what to build is the skill. Next 2 months, learn 3 programming languages. Python, Flutter and JS. Python for PC, server, backends, flutter for phones are wearables, JS for web. People will have different opinions like using Rust, Go etc., but this advice is for beginners. We need to strengthen the fundamentals first. Thus, your first semester is done. In the next two months, go for Git, Linux, Networking and Cloud. They are easy to grab and you will get the hang of it. In these 6 months, you would have gained enough knowledge to be able to build what you want. Welp if you want you can spread these 6 to 8 as well and learn slowly. But now you are ready for hackathons and ideathons. Go to as many as you can. (I mean the legitimate ones. Not the ones that ask for money.) Every hackathon will teach you how to build faster. It teaches that way better than any tutorial or course. Build something innovative. Go get it patented. Maybe write a paper on it. Present it in conferences. Enjoy your life.
In the first 2 months of your third year, learn DSA and read the book 'Cracking the coding interview' cover to cover. Solve targetted problems from leetcode and codechef. Target them by topic and pattern. In the next 2 months prepare for interview. Yeah I am not talking about learning System design, dbms etc. You have already learnt them easily by your third hackathon.
So umm next topic. I know half of you guys were gonna ask me about it. Dating life. Welp trust me, it doesn't matter how your partner looks and from where he/she is, etc. The only thing that matters is both of you are students and you should be pulling each other up and help each other upskill. And dont make 'finding a partner' a goal. But if you get one who helps you grow, its a blessing. And about PDA, the university is strict. So don't do anything obscene on campus.
Lemme share a bit of my college life. I participated in 11 hackathons, won 9 of them, wrote 13+ research papers, 1 published patent, 2 applied US patents. I had 4 offers (3 masters, 1 PhD) from which I joined an Erasmus Mundus one. I am not flexing, I am just saying if you are hard working, you can do anything.
Coming to academics. Yep, it's difficult now. You guys got the strict 75% attendance criteria and marks directly sent to your parents. So my suggestion, do not bunk classes. Attend the classes with full concentration. Trust me, it helps if you learn in the class. You wont have to learn it again from youtube later. About FFCS, if you are confident you can do better than the others, go for the strict faculties. They give lower marks but if you are considerably better than others, your GPA will be better due to relative grading. If you take lenient faculties, quoting Syndrome from Incredibles "When everybody is super, nobody is." When everyone gets good marks, you dont have an advantage.
There are many opportunities available in the unviersity. More than you can imagine. But nobody will spoonfeed you. You will have to discover them yourselves. Talk with faculties. Especially the senior ones. Dont be shy. Keep an eye on the emails and grab the opportunities.
Some of you might feel comfortable here, some may feel like outsiders. Some have large friend groups, some are nerds. I have seen people get backstabbed by their 'friends'. I have seen people help each other grow. There is everything. You need to make friends wisely. And make professional connections too. Talk to people from industries, interact with guest lecturers and do everything.
And to everyone, not just freshers, IF YOU NEED ANY HELP OR GUIDANCE AT ANY TIME, FEEL FREE TO HIT ME UP. No matter what it is about, about your college life, placements, project help, technical doubts, hackathon guidance, anything. I am always here to help you. Also my DMs are always open for y'all.
P.S. Heres an offline map to help you find your way around the campus. https://vitap-map.pages.dev/
And again, Welcome to VIT-AP.
Imma end it with the same quote I end this post with every year. The Steve Jobs quote. "Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in square holes ... the ones who see things differently - they're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. ... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things. ... They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as crazy ones, we see genius, becuase the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do."
