ROAD MAP FOR CSE STUDENTS:

I am trying to give a general idea of how CSE students should proceed with their engineering. Please share
with all your friends in CSE and ECE/EEE who are interested in the software sector.
You need to understand and appreciate that the curriculum in NITs and IITs are not focused on your branch
as such in the first year. So, you need to work properly from the first year itself so that you can aim for the
best placements as well as foreign university admits.
This is August '13. Most major companies will ask you to sit for internship tests in July '15. That leaves you
with about 2 years to prepare hard. If you take things lightly, then you will not be able to get interns in your
dream companies like Microsoft, Amazon etc. So, start working systematically from now on and you can
achieve wonders.
Before I tell you the final guideline, I want to tell you something else. All of you must have heard of IIIT
Hyderabad. In today's job market, students of IIIT-H are considered to be at par with students of IIT
Bombay, Delhi etc. You might wanna know why. This is because of their curriculum. They learn CSE right
from their first year and so, they get 3 years to study before placements. On the other hand, at NITs & IITs,
students study CSE only for 2 years before placements.
But now, you guys are in the first year. You have still not wasted any time. You can achieve as much as any
IITian, trust me and even more. You can throw your JEE Mains rank in the dustbin. It means nothing
anymore. Only your hard-work will see you through. You might be board topper, MCQ test topper, may not
know advance Mathematics, might be here because of reservation etc. From now, what happened in the past
means nothing to anyone. The only thing that matters now is whether you work hard or not. You might be
super intelligent, but if you don't work hard, no one gives a sh*t about your intelligence.
ROADMAP:
1) December '13: LEARN C++ by December. Not basic stuff. Buy the Herbert Shildt book. Complete topics
like Operator Overloading, Virtual Functions etc etc. Four months is enough time for this. Its easy, you only
need to read and understand.
2) July '14: Watch the videos of Data Structures & Algorithms by Dr. Naveen Garg of IIT Delhi on NPTEL.
Download them from the internet. If you don't have great internet nearby, then some of your friends can go
to the LAN room and download the videos and share them. There are about 40 videos of 1 hour each. Data
Structures & Algorithms is the most important aspect of Computer Science. Go through all the videos
thoroughly. Implement the programs in C++. Do this up to July . Buy this book "Data Structures Using C
and C++ by Tenenbaum" to help you in coding. Dr. Naveen Garg will make things really easy as well. You just
need to listen to the videos carefully and you'll do great. Whenever in doubt, discuss with your friends.
3) July '14: You must learn the major part of the videos by April itself and complete the remaining aspects up
to July comfortably. Learn JAVA from May to July properly as well.
4) August '14 to December '14: Learn Algorithm design techniques like Greedy Algorithms, Divide &
Conquer Algorithms, Dynamic Programming, Number-Theory Algorithms, String Matching, Computational
Geometry, NP-Completeness, Approximation Algorithms. Basically, buy the book "Introduction to
Algorithms by Cormen" and do all the topics you have not yet studied from that book. This part can be a
little tricky. The only thing that can help you here is practicing problems on CodeChef. The more you
practice, the better you get. Not all the topics I mentioned are tough. Just Dynamic Programming, others are
easy. Code properly and work as a team.
5) August '14 and beyond : Start coding thoroughly on CodeChef. Participate in the competitions. Apply the
algorithms you learnt previously. You will have to keep learning new algorithms for solving problems on
CodeChef. Its not difficult. You only need to practice. Make teams and learn from each other. Practice is the

only thing that matters. When you can't solve a problem, read the EDITORIAL after the competition. They
will tell you how to solve problems.
6) By June- July '15, you should have completed all major topics of Data Structures and Algorithms and
should have solved lots of problems on CodeChef. You are now ready to sit for Internship for companies like
Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon etc.
7) Once you have secured an internships at these companies, don't stop there. Keep coding on CodeChef and
now start coding on TopCoder(It is also like CodeChef). Keep coding for the next one year. You also need to
start doing some good projects now. Go for Open Source Contributions. You can find everything on Google,
don't worry.
Finally, after you finish your internship, you may or may not be offered a job. It depends on how well you
perform. In any case, you can sit for foreign placements in companies like Facebook, Microsoft Redmond,
Epic Systems etc in your final year. If you have done points 1 to 7 properly, then no one can stop you. If you
are interested in Indian placements, then go for companies like Google, Directi etc.
9) Coming to CGPA, anything above 8 will be enough if you have done points 1-7 properly. Apart from points
1-7, you also need to study subjects taught in B. Tech like Operating Systems, Systems Programming,
Computer Networks, Database Management Systems. Study these topics properly when they are taught to
you. Don't need to go for anything beyond the curriculum in these subjects. If you are interested in
placements, this will be enough.
However, if you want to go for MS from a great university, then you need to focus much more on projects and
maintain a good CGPA (above 8.5 at least, preferably 9). You need not do too much of CodeChef etc. Do lots
of Open Source Projects, learn lots of new stuff. Ask professors to let you work under them on some projects.
Try to publish a few papers. A few review papers (they are considered to be easy) should be good as well.
You can also visit the website Coursera,eDx and Udacity to find great courses on Data Structures, Basic
Programming etc etc from universities like Stanford, MIT etc. They are free of cost.
For students of other branches, don't feel disappointed that I am guiding only CSE and people interested in
software sector. I don't know much about core branches, but I can tell you something. You need to start doing
projects. Anything. Get your hands dirty. Technozion in coming. Look at the events you like and build
something. You might feel that it is too advanced and you don't know how to begin. You might finish your
third year and you still won't know many of these things. You need to experiment. That is how you will learn.
There are plenty of simple Electronics projects people can do in their first year itself. Google them.
All the best!