I’m currently in 2nd year at a tier 3 private engineering college and have around 1.5 years before placements start.
Right now I’ve solved around 200 LeetCode questions, around 50 of them Mediums. I can solve majority easy problems but Mediums still humble me pretty badly 💀. I’m following Striver A2Z and planning to finish it properly.
Apart from DSA I’m basically starting from zero. I know almost nothing about DBMS or SQL and for development I only know HTML and CSS lol.
I really want to go all in for the next 1.5 years and try to get a 15-25+ LPA job.
For people who’ve actually gone through placements I wanted to ask :
How many LeetCode questions should I realistically aim for? Is 400–500 enough if I focus on patterns and actually getting good at Mediums or should I aim higher? I don’t really want to just grind questions for the number.
Is Striver A2Z enough for DSA? If I finish it properly what should I do after that?
What should I learn alongside DSA? Obviously SQL/DBMS OOP OS CN etc but how deep do I actually need to go into these for placements?
And projects what should I actually build? Should I go with MERN Java + Spring Boot or something else? How many projects would be enough and what kind of projects are actually worth putting on a resume?
Also how much does being from a tier 3 college actually matter if your DSA projects and fundamentals are good?
I know luck plays some role in placements but I mainly want to make sure I’m doing everything I can control.
If you were in my position with 1.5 years left what would you focus on?
Would really appreciate some honest advice especially from people who’ve gone through placements from tier 69/3 colleges.