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Focus on SchoolDepending on your experience, I’d recommend just focusing on learning the material in the starter classes. A key emphasis is on learning the material and understanding it, and not just trying to get an A in the course. Ideally you’d do both, but especially in “easy” starter classes you don’t want to neglect learning for the A. GPA can be important for CS internships, but understanding material well is significantly more important than just having a 4.0 (and chances are if you understand the material well, you’ll succeed in those classes)As college courses can have a very different feel/style to most high school courses, it’s important to identify how you learn/study the best, as this a skill that will help you get through all of college (the courses and workloads are only going to get harder, and you need to prepare yourself adequately for that).Try to be proactive in your courses, especially CSE courses. Answer questions in class, ask questions, go to office hours when you need help/when you want to clarify information with the professor. Depending on the college/university, you might have opportunities to work with professors on research/tutoring, which can be a huge boost to your resume and give you opportunities to meet other students, networking with them, and can help with landing internships.Experience/Side ProjectsDepending on your prior experience, you may have already done side projects in high school or over a summer, or you might be coming in fresh with little to no experience in Computer Science. Regardless, side projects are a great way to boost your resume to land internships. A common misconception is that side projects have to be amazing, a novel idea that could become a startup, with over 10,000+ downloads, or have won a hackathon, etc. They don’t - it’s more important that you’re able to show that you took time out of school to work on a project, and was able to learn through the process.I’d recommend mobile apps (Android/IOS) or web apps as an easy starter project, with at least 1–2 different APIs. You may have to learn a new language especially if you come from a Java/C/C++ background, but this will give you good exposure of different languages and tools, as well as the ability to integrate APIs much easier into your project. Identify a project you could imagine as useful to yourself/others (e.g an app that picks me a random ‘good’ restaurant from Yelp that’s close by), and start with a tutorial for the framework you want to use (e.g. if making a web app find a MEAN stack or Flask tutorial), follow that tutorial to completion. Most online tutorials will introduce you to the framework, some tidbits of the languages involved, as well as help you build a starter project. Once you build that starter project, you can tweak the project (now that the infrastructure for the project has been setup) and now integrate your own APIs/change the project to match that of your desired side project. Your goal should be to at least deploy the project online, with your source code on Github so that recruiters can view the project code.It’s also important to be consistent with your side project and deadlines, as it’s common to get fatigued and abandon projects midway. Set aside a fixed amount of time each week to work on a side project, and have a clear goal in mind of what are the features you want to have done at some time frame (perhaps end of the quarter/semester), and stick to this planned schedule so you don’t procrastinate and end up not finishing the project.Sidenote - Hackathons are a great way to work on a side project, with lots of mentors to help out when you have questions and are stuck on your project. It’s also a great way to find a few people that are potentially interested in working on the same project as you, and working together on a project can help keep everyone motivated to keep working until the project is finished.In addition, look for clubs/organizations at your school that build projects, you might be able to join those and thus gain experience through working on projects with those organizations.ResumeIt’s important to get your resume looked at, as almost no one knows how to write a good resume from the start. Make use of professors, university career services, and perhaps other, more experienced Computer Science students and have them critique/give feedback on your resume. You can also ask recruiters/engineers at career fairs/info sessions to review your resume, and a large majority of people won’t hesitate to help you out, especially when you come in with the angle of just trying to improve/learn what it takes to be ready for internships.Freshman InternshipsLots of companies offer freshman/sophomore specific internship opportunities that are definitely worth applying to, in addition to regular internships. Search around for these, but a list of some of the more notable ones are as follows:Facebook UniversityGoogle Engineering PracticumMicrosoft ExploreTwo Sigma Freshman InternshipPalantir PATHAmazon Future EngineerI’d highly recommend applying to all of these, these are great starter internships that can really help you get a lot of opportunities for future internships down the road.Make use of all internship opportunitiesYou might have a dream company in mind already, but it’s important to really apply any and everywhere through all means possible. Online, referrals, career fairs, info sessions, the more ways you can get your name into the system, the better. I’d also recommend prioritizing in-person opportunities such as career fairs/company info sessions, as this allows you to make a direct impression on recruiters, and you’re able to communicate your passion/interest for a company in person.In addition, at career fairs I’d recommend targeting smaller startups, as they’ll be more likely to take a chance on freshman (and you won’t have to wait in line as long, so you can talk to more companies instead of waiting 2 hours in line for Facebook).A list of online applications can be found at intern.supply, the site is a bit outdated/can be slow to update but all those companies are worth looking up applications for and applying to, as an internship at any of them would be a great opportunity for freshmen. LinkedIn and Indeed are also great resources to apply for jobs and view possible openings, and in general it can’t hurt to apply to as many opportunities as possible.Don’t sweat itEven if you don’t land any internships freshman year, take time to prepare yourself for sophomore year so that you’ll be a great candidate. There’s still lots of ways to gain experience, through tutoring/research/side projects, and in the worst case where you don’t get an internship, focus on working on a side project over summer. It’s not a race where you have to get a freshman internship or you lose, just focus on making yourself the best candidate possible for sophomore year.Google Summer of Code is also a great opportunity to gain experience, applications are in Spring and you’d gain experience contributing to an open source project over the summer. This is a great fallback option, so if things don’t seem to be going well, make sure to apply to this program in Spring.Practicing for InterviewsWhen you land interviews with companies, the next step is to pass these interviews. Make use of your resources - Cracking the Coding Interview is a great starter resource for most students (you will be very prepared if you go through the entire book and all problems), Leetcode, Hackerrank, and Elements of Programming Interviews are all great resources to practice problems. Don’t forget to check Glassdoor to see what types of questions candidates have been asked in the past, and there’s no real secret to interview prep. It just takes time, practice, and dedication to just learn the patterns associated with different types of problems. Over time you’ll get better and better at these questions, though early on it’s important to focus on landing the interviews, as that’ll be the biggest barrier to getting internships. Once you’re getting lots of interviews, focus on passing these interviews through practice, and eventually you’ll be getting internship offers!I also wrote a Medium post on landing CS internships, with some additional info that can be found here.

Macro-level answer: When I started high school, I had ambition. I knew that I was smart, and I knew what the ultimate prize for smart kids was: admission to a top-tier college. I didn't really have the best advice on how to do that, though. From what I knew, top applicants were supposed to be "well-rounded". I literally made a spreadsheet of my activities to make sure that I had a good distribution. I'm terrible at sports, and worse at music; those were non-starters. But I had writing, speaking, leadership, and community service to go with my science.The community service involved, among other things, making cards for nursing home residents. One afternoon, I went along to distribute the cards. Every single resident, except one, was stone cold demented. Most of them couldn't even respond to our presence. One was blind and wheelchair bound, but mentally intact. I gathered that her family had decided she was too much hassle and sent her to a home, where she had nobody to talk to but busy, grumpy nurses and these slabs of warm meat that had once been people. I had nothing to offer her except a bit of conversation and a stack of stupid cards that she couldn't even see. I felt about three inches tall.So I went home and had a good think about my life. Sooner or later, I'd end up in their shoes. Meanwhile, I'm throwing away an hour a week on stupid nonsense on the off chance that I might impress some nonsense-hugger at Harvard and end up in a class full of the same. I'm a scientist. I still have my life ahead of me. What am I doing?I quit the majority of my "well-rounded" activities. I left a few of the less demanding ones as insurance, but for the most part, I doubled down on science. The adults who knew what I was doing shook their heads. She had so much potential. What is she doing? My instincts told me I was doing the right thing, but nobody else agreed.I got a good scare midway through junior year. I struck out hard on the pre-college summer programs that are supposed to be an early indicator of your admissions potential. No RSI for me. No nothing, in fact. My dad had to call in some favors with an old college friend to get me a summer job. I didn't have much by that point. I'd won National Science Bowl once. That was basically it. I started to wonder if I’d ruined my life.Fortunately, stuff came together at the end of my junior year. I won a bunch of national-level awards, and suddenly, I had one of the best science-nerd profiles out there. I was certainly much more competitive than I would've been had I stuck with the nursing home visits, Model UN, et al. It was just a bit of a sweat.Micro-level answer: I did say I doubled down on science, right? One day, I was to return from one science competition during lunchtime, attend school for one period, and then leave early to go to yet another one. During that period, I was scheduled to have an AP Government exam, which I hadn't studied for. No problem. I'd have lunchtime to study. Except I got stuck in traffic. I get violently carsick, so studying was not an option. I got to school just as lunchtime was ending. So...I didn't go to class. I hid in the bathroom and studied for the upcoming competition, which I wasn't ready for either. I returned to class with about five minutes remaining, apologized to the teacher, and said I'd been stuck in traffic. The school called my mom. She covered for me. Then she made it very clear that this wasn't going to happen again. It didn't. Thanks Mom. (The next time I had an exam in AP Government...this happened instead. Kay Aull's answer to What was the worst test you ever had? This back-story might make it clearer why I didn't want to just explain my situation and beg for mercy.)

It is pretty tough. Only 7 or 8 people get these branches from the others. So total 15to 20 seats in the whole batch of around 600 ‘lower’ branch people fighting to get them. You need CGPA of around 9.2/3 for MNC and slightly higher for ECE. Getting this much CGPA is very very very tough.Courses like Intro to programming (for non programming background people) , Engineering Drawing(for most of people), even Maths etc are very rigorous and professors are so boring and their style abstract or they assume that all are getting along. Thus many people lose interest somewhere midway in the subjects.By the first week of college itself, you'll miss your coaching teachers so badly and most your dreams of being taught by the best professors of the world in a Premier college will be shattered and crushed so ruthlessly. I'm sounding too pessimistic; believe me, I want as many people as possible to prove me wrong, but the story is same year after year. Even our seniors told us the same.In my batch of 120 people of chemical Engg, only 3 people went out to CSE or ECE and 1 person came in from Engg Physics.So by the end of 1st semester more than 70% people dreaming to go for dept change will lose the hope. Others will think of doing better and getting a perfect 10 in 2nd sem,some will reach close to it but most wont.Thus very few people who can keep their inner light burning to get required cut by shunning all glitter of campus, newly found freedom, attraction of a metro and IIT Tag and what not… People who can study by themselves by going the extra mile, cooking the fodder themself instead of already cooked food which coachings used to provide. These people and some extraordinary studs will get the dept changed after the 1st year.So good luck boy. I want you to get what you deserve. All the best from my side to all people like you.P. S. It is generally found that people want to go for dept change not for the love of the syllabus but they have made an image in their minds by seeing the previous year cutoffs and seeing rankers go there that some particular departments are better while others aren't.My advice to all such people is that be ready for next shocker. What subjects you study at IITD will hardly matter when you sit for placements except application oriented courses like CSE or a very few other dept courses. Core branch placements are less than 5 to 10 percent of the whole batch size.Most people will be placed in sectors which hardly care for your major from IIT. All they need is a developed personality, good CGPA(7.5or 8), analytical abilities and extra curricular activities. So go for this Department change race only if you want to work in core sectors or research field. Else focus on others aspects as well.Hope that addresses your query.