The 6-Month Campus Placement Roadmap for CS Students in India

Campus placements are the single highest-leverage event in most Indian CS students' careers. A good placement can change your financial trajectory for years. Yet most students prepare randomly — doing LeetCode for a few weeks, then panicking in the last month.

This roadmap tells you exactly what to do, week by week, over 6 months. It's designed for students targeting both service companies (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant) and product companies (Freshworks, Zoho, Swiggy, CRED, Razorpay, MNC product teams).

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Before You Start: Know Your Targets

Indian campus placements split into two tracks. Your preparation strategy depends on which you're targeting.

Track A — Service Companies (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, Cognizant)

• Focus on aptitude (quantitative, verbal, logical reasoning)
• Basic DSA — easy to medium problems
• Communication skills matter as much as technical skills
• Most hiring happens in bulk via online tests

Track B — Product Companies (Zoho, Freshworks, Swiggy, CRED, Razorpay, PhonePe)

• Heavy DSA focus — medium to hard problems
• System design basics (for roles at some companies)
• 3-5 technical interview rounds
• Resume needs to show real projects

Most students should prepare for Track B. A Track B-ready student can pass any Track A test. The reverse is not true. Aim high, and use Track A companies as safety nets.

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Month 1: Foundations

Goal: Comfortable with Python/Java/C++, solved 30 Easy problems, understand Big-O.

Weeks 1–2: Programming Language Mastery

Pick one language and go deep. Python is recommended for placements:

• Cleaner syntax → faster to write in interviews
• Built-in data structures (dict, set, collections.deque, heapq)
• Most LeetCode solutions available in Python

Regardless of language, you must be able to:

• Write clean loops, conditions, functions without thinking
• Use arrays, strings, hash maps, and sets confidently
• Handle edge cases: empty input, single element, negative numbers

Weeks 3–4: Arrays, Strings, and Big-O

DSA topics:

• Array traversal, prefix sums, two-pointer technique
• String manipulation, frequency counting
• Big-O analysis — learn to state complexity for everything you write

Target: 30 Easy problems on LeetCode. Do not move to Medium yet. Understand why each solution works.

Aptitude start: Begin 30 minutes of aptitude practice daily (IndiaBix, PrepInsta). Topics: percentages, ratios, time-speed-distance, number systems.

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Month 2: Core DSA

Goal: Solved 60 more problems (mix of Easy and Medium), understand hash maps and recursion deeply.

Weeks 5–6: Hash Maps, Sets, Sliding Window

These patterns appear in 30-40% of medium problems:

• Hash map for O(1) lookup
• Sliding window for contiguous subarray problems
• Two pointers for sorted array problems

Target problems: Group Anagrams, Subarray Sum Equals K, Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters, Top K Frequent Elements.

Weeks 7–8: Linked Lists, Stacks, Queues

Often underestimated. Linked list problems test pointer manipulation — a skill many students haven't practiced since their data structures lab.

Must-solve: Reverse Linked List, Detect Cycle (Floyd's algorithm), Merge Two Sorted Lists, Valid Parentheses, Daily Temperatures.

Milestone check: By end of Month 2, you should be able to solve most Easy problems in under 15 minutes and start Medium problems without looking at hints.

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Month 3: Trees, Graphs, and Recursion

Goal: Comfortable with all tree traversals, BFS/DFS on graphs, and backtracking.

Weeks 9–10: Binary Trees and BSTs

Trees appear in almost every product company interview. You must be able to:

• Write all 4 traversals (inorder, preorder, postorder, level order) from memory
• Solve problems using recursion on trees
• Apply BFS for level-order problems
• Validate BSTs, find LCA, compute diameter

Target problems: Maximum Depth, Level Order Traversal, Validate BST, Lowest Common Ancestor, Binary Tree Right Side View.

Weeks 11–12: Graphs and Backtracking

Graphs are the hardest topic for most students — mostly because the representation isn't obvious.

Key skills:

• Build adjacency list from edge list
• DFS for connected components, cycle detection
• BFS for shortest path (Rotting Oranges, Word Ladder)
• Topological sort (Course Schedule)

Backtracking: Subsets, Permutations, Combination Sum. Learn the template: choose → explore → un-choose.

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Month 4: Dynamic Programming and System Design Basics

Goal: Solved 20 DP problems, understand 3 system design concepts well enough to explain them.

Weeks 13–14: Dynamic Programming

DP is where average students separate from strong candidates at product companies.

Start with this order:

1. Climbing Stairs (understand the idea)
2. House Robber (simple choice DP)
3. Coin Change (bottom-up tabulation)
4. Longest Common Subsequence (2D DP)
5. Word Break (string DP)

Do not jump to hard DP problems. Understand these 5 deeply first.

Weeks 15–16: Greedy Algorithms and System Design

Greedy: Jump Game, Merge Intervals, Gas Station. Recognise when greedy works (local optimal = global optimal).

System design basics (2 hours total is enough at this stage):

• Client-server model, REST APIs, HTTP methods, status codes
• SQL vs NoSQL — know when to use each
• Caching with Redis — what to cache, TTL, invalidation
• Load balancers — why they're needed, round robin
• Design a URL shortener end-to-end (classic fresher question)

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Month 5: Mock Interviews and Speed

Goal: Solve 2 medium problems in 45 minutes consistently. Complete 10 mock interviews.

Weeks 17–18: Timed Practice

Speed matters. In real interviews, you have 20-30 minutes per problem. Start racing the clock:

• Set a 20-minute timer for each medium problem
• If you don't finish, note where you got stuck (pattern recognition, coding, edge cases)
• Fix that specific weakness

Mock interviews: Do at least 10. Use SCS Mock Interview for structured AI feedback. For peer mocks, use Pramp (free). Simulate exact interview conditions — no hints, no pausing.

Weeks 19–20: Aptitude Test Preparation

Service companies and many product companies have an online aptitude round. Do not neglect this.

Quantitative aptitude: Percentages, profit/loss, time-work, time-speed-distance, simple/compound interest, permutations and combinations.

Verbal ability: Reading comprehension, sentence correction, para jumbles, fill in the blanks.

Logical reasoning: Seating arrangement, blood relations, syllogisms, coding-decoding.

Target: 80% accuracy on mock aptitude tests. Practice 45 minutes daily.

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Month 6: Company-Specific Prep and Execution

Goal: Know your top 10 target companies' interview patterns. Apply to 30+ companies.

Week 21: Research Target Companies

For each company you're targeting:

1. Check their GlassDoor, Leetcode Discuss, GeeksforGeeks interview experience
2. Note: how many rounds? What type of questions (Easy/Medium/Hard)? HR round topics?
3. Adjust your final prep accordingly

Company tiers (rough guide):

| Tier | Companies | DSA Level | Other | |---|---|---|---| | Tier 1 (Mass Hiring) | TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant | Easy | Aptitude-heavy | | Tier 2 (Product Startups) | Zoho, Freshworks, Chargebee | Easy-Medium | CS fundamentals | | Tier 3 (Strong Product) | Swiggy, CRED, Razorpay, PhonePe | Medium-Hard | System design basics | | Tier 4 (MNC Product) | Microsoft, Google, Amazon | Hard | Full system design |

Week 22: Core CS Subjects

Product companies frequently ask OS, DBMS, and Networks questions in technical rounds.

Operating Systems: Processes vs threads, deadlocks (Banker's algorithm), memory management (paging, segmentation), CPU scheduling algorithms (FCFS, SJF, Round Robin).

DBMS: Normalisation (1NF, 2NF, 3NF, BCNF), ACID properties, indexing (B-tree, hash index), SQL queries (joins, group by, having), transactions.

Computer Networks: OSI model (know all 7 layers), TCP vs UDP, HTTP vs HTTPS, DNS resolution, subnetting basics.

How much depth: You don't need to be an expert. Know the concepts well enough to explain them in 2-3 sentences and answer a follow-up.

Weeks 23–24: Resume, LinkedIn, and Applications

Resume (1 page, ATS-friendly):

• Projects first (not coursework) — each project should have: what it does, tech stack used, one quantified result ("reduced load time by 40%," "handles 1000 concurrent users")
• Skills section: programming languages, frameworks, databases, tools
• Education: CGPA if above 7.5, relevant coursework
• No objective statement — use the space for another project

Analyse every JD before applying. Use JD Analyser to identify gaps between the job requirements and your current skills. Fix gaps before applying if you have time.

Application strategy:

• Apply to 30-40 companies (not 300 — quality applications beat spray-and-pray)
• Apply early — many companies close before the official deadline
• Follow up once after 2 weeks if no response

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The 3 Things That Actually Determine Your Placement

After helping hundreds of students prepare, these three factors predict placement outcomes better than anything else:

1. Consistency beats intensity. Two hours daily for 6 months beats 14 hours daily for 2 weeks before placements. DSA requires pattern recognition that develops slowly. You can't cram it.

2. Communication is underrated. In an interview, a candidate who explains their thinking clearly while writing a slightly suboptimal solution beats a candidate who writes optimal code while staying silent. Narrate your thought process out loud.

3. Projects beat certifications. Two deployed projects with real features (auth, database, API) say more than 10 online certifications. Build things. Deploy them. Put the GitHub link on your resume.

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Quick Reference: Tools for Each Stage

| Stage | Tool | |---|---| | DSA practice with hints | SCS Practice | | Learn CS concepts | SCS Learn | | Mock interviews | SCS Mock Interview | | JD gap analysis | SCS JD Analyser | | Study schedule | SCS Planner | | Peer mock interviews | Pramp (free) | | Problem bank | LeetCode, GeeksforGeeks | | Aptitude | IndiaBix, PrepInsta |

Start today. The students who begin 6 months out have an enormous advantage over the students who start 6 weeks out. The material isn't harder — they just have more time to let it sink in.

First step right now: Open the 6-month DSA roadmap and read Week 1. Then open Practice and solve your first 5 Easy problems today. Don't wait for Monday.