I am puzzled what to do before college placements?

[Jitu]

I am confused while prioritize things in my life
I am a third year student branch Computer Science and Engineering.
I like coding too much.
As my third year is on the verge of end so I want to ready myself for placements.

Before asking my question let me first rate my skills-

Programming - 7
Problem Solving - 8
Technical Knowledge - 6(here I have a big problem of not able to remember the definitions,I know things but not able to define them properly (or in bookish language) when suddenly someone ask as in technical interview)
Aptitude - 7

By 7 I mean better than average people.
I am not perfect in anything but yup I am better than average in many things.

I know C/C++,Java,worked on Android as my minor project and you confident enough to learn any language in minimum time as if required.

You know my skills set now, my problem is that
I want to do aptitude, intern-ship and cloud computing course and obviously making my better repo in coding world.
I have limited time of at-most 2 month for doing all the stuffs that I want to do.

I have confidence of clearing my Interview Rounds but little doubt about my Aptitude round.If I get failed in Aptitude round then I will even not able to sit in Interviews.

Please tell me what will you do,if you are at my place.
Tell me should I have to go for cloud computing course (as great scope in future) or intern-ship or Aptitude classes(that will help me in placement).

If you have some other better suggestions for me according to my skill-set then please suggest.
If you have some intern-ship options which suits my skill-set then please let me know I will apply there(as till now I don't have any intern-ship offer),please don't suggest paid intern-ships,I don't want stipend but I also don't want to pay thousands for intern-ship.

 

[ChrisJA]

I am confused while prioritize things in my life
I am a third year student branch Computer Science and Engineering.
I like coding too much.
...

Coding WHAT? Signal processing on DSP chips? Realtime? Robots, games? Operating systems internals? Have you ever worked on a project that has more than one million lines of code?

I doubt you have done ALL of the above. So pick one you have zero experience with and join an existing Open Source project and contribute. Or join two.

What I notice with new programmers out of school is their lack of experience with larger projects. The kind that have hundreds f source files and complex build procedures and version control and bug tracking systems.

 

[Jitu]

@ChrisJA yes you are right that I don't have experience of millions of lines of code.
By coding I mean do coding and solve problems on sites like codechef.com
So are you suggesting me to do open source and want me to avoid all (cloud course,internship,campus training) ?

 

[ChrisJA]

No, don't avoid anything. I was suggesting what you could do on your own right now. Solving easy well defined assignments is a good start but what I notice most recent graduates lack is the ability to work on problems that are far larger than one person can solve. Typically these larger systems depend on dozens or more other large open source systems. Maybe the camera on a robot car uses OpenCV for image capture and analysis and the people working on this would not have a clue how route planning works. The car and a 3D CAD system might by chance use the same 3D geometry engine. There are countless large projects in need of help.

The formal training helps a LOT. But you need both, real-world large scale projects and the more focused training too.

 

[Jitu]

@ChrisJA-
Ok I got what you are suggesting, I will start work on some opensource project in my extra time.
But please tell me one thing that should I will go for cloud computing course or go for aptitude classes?
May I do aptitude at home by myself and go for cloud computing classes?
What will be the scope of Cloud Computing in near future specially in India and if I will have cloud computing certification in my hand then will it provide me extra preference during college placements?

 

[ChrisJA]

I don't know anything about how colleges and universities outside of California and the US.

Here is an analogy: Let's say you wanted to be a fiction author. You want to learn to write short stories and novels. I'd say the best way is to read a lot of them and jump in and try writing some and also to find other new authors and exchange ideas and swap stories. A very bad way to learn would be to take cases in the "use and operation of Word Processing software" or "page design" or any other tools classes.

Same for software. just do it.Then if you need to learn some specific technology you take time and read up on it, then go back to work. If you know nothing of the technology classes can help but the big thing is to get involved with others and do "real" tasks and real projects.