Inspired by Anu Sharma's pillars: Internships, CS Fundamentals, Projects, and Coding Contests.
| Phase / Months | Primary Focus | DSA Targets | MERN / Projects | Contests | Internships / Extras |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 — M1–M3 | Kickstart DSA + CS basics | Arrays, Strings, Recursion, Sorting, Searching 1–2 problems/day (easy→medium) |
Learn HTML/CSS/JS fundamentals | Start LeetCode Weekly (no pressure) | OS, DBMS, CN basics; set up GitHub |
| Phase 2 — M4–M6 | MERN foundations + Project 1 | 2–3 problems/day; prefix sums, two-pointers, hashing | Learn MERN: React, Node, Express, MongoDB Project 1: Task Manager / Blog / Notes (auth, CRUD) |
LeetCode Weekly + one Codeforces Div3/month | Write README, deploy (Vercel/Render), add tests |
| Phase 3 — M7–M9 | Advanced DSA + Project 2 | Trees, Graphs, Heaps, Sliding Window, DP intro | Project 2: Realtime Chat / E-commerce / Job Portal JWT/OAuth, Pagination, Search, Payments/WebSockets |
Weekly contests; target steady rating growth | Polish LinkedIn; start networking; mini-blog posts |
| Phase 4 — M10–M12 | Internship push + Open Source | Graph + DP medium sets; 50–70 problems/quarter | Fix bugs, add CI/CD, Dockerize one project | 1–2 rated contests/week (LeetCode/CF/AtCoder) | Apply to startups; hackathons; first OSS PRs |
| Phase 5 — M13–M15 | Internship + System Design basics | Greedy, Backtracking, DSU, bit tricks | APIs, caching (Redis), rate-limiting, logging | Maintain weekly cadence | Low-level design (OOP, patterns); start HLD primers |
| Phase 6 — M16–M18 | DSA mastery + Resume boost | 400–500 total solved (mostly medium + some hard) | Refactor, unit/integration tests, load tests | Aim top ~25% in weekly contests | Mock interviews; resume/story bullets (STAR) |
| Phase 7 — M19–M21 | Big Tech interview prep | Top 150 FAANG-style patterns; timed practice | Small design exercises (URL shortener, feed, chat) | Keep sharp; analyze post-contest | Revise OS/DBMS/CN; behavioral drills |
| Phase 8 — M22–M24 | Applications + Final polish | Review weak topics; 1–2 timed mocks/week | Polish UI/UX; add analytics; final deployments | Weekly; keep routine steady | Apply widely (Google/Amazon/MS/LinkedIn + startups); referrals |