Joel, over at Joel on Software has a very detailed article about what computer science majors in college should work towards. The article is listed here.
Joel says …
1. Learn how to write before graduating.
2. Learn C before graduating.
3. Learn microeconomics before graduating.
4. Don’t blow off non-CS classes just because they’re boring.
5. Take programming-intensive courses.
6. Stop worrying about all the jobs going to India.
7. No matter what you do, get a good summer internship.
I say …
I remember my days in college and counting down his list I see this …
1) Yup, the only two subjects I ever excelled at were English Language and Computer Science
2) Been there done that, middle school.
3) Signed up for a Management minor at college
4) Umm, I tried, tried real hard. Do management and industrial engineering count?
5) Believe me when I say this, I looked. Looked around hard enough to think sitting on some MS graduate level courses.
6) Guess this doesn’t apply to a Bangalore born kid!
7) This is really where I excelled at college. I took on internships as soon as I could and as many as I could. But don’t make mistakes; you will be talking 3 month-long mistakes. With internships in the summer there aren’t any opportunities to quit and start again in mid-summer.
Make it count, and take it more for the manager you are working under than the Company name on your biz card (though, that helps a lot too). I mixed my internships up a little with some at Rubix Information Technologies, a telecom software company and one at PricewaterhouseCoopers. I also ended up working for Rubix by managing there Bangalore development center and got written up about it in the Times of India (here).
So take chances. Things have a way of working out (unless Murphy wants otherwise).