First year at CGC Landran — the honest version nobody posts about

I'll be honest — when I didn't clear JEE Advanced and my counselling rank landed me at CGC Landran, I cried. Not a little. My dad drove me to the campus for admission day in silence and I think he was also partly mourning the IIT dream. I'm writing this 18 months later because I want to tell that version of me, and whoever is feeling what he felt, that it gets genuinely good. Not 'cope with it' good. Actually good.

The first semester is a specific kind of disorienting. You're surrounded by people who seem very confident about things — their branch, their career plans, which companies will come, which seniors to trust. I had no confidence about anything. My roommate in C Block, Harpreet, had already solved 40 LeetCode problems before the first week of classes. I didn't know what LeetCode was.

What changed for me was the technical fest in November. I signed up for a hackathon on a dare — our team had no idea what we were doing, we pulled an all-nighter on a project that barely worked, and we came fourth. Fourth out of thirty teams. The certificate is still on my wall. Not because fourth is impressive, but because that 36-hour period was the first time I felt like I was actually doing engineering and not just attending it.

The placements picture at CGC is real and specific. TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Capgemini, Cognizant, HCL — these companies come every year without fail. If you prepare well — and 'well' here means LeetCode medium level + basics of OS, DBMS, CN, OOP — you will get placed. The 4.5–8 LPA range is achievable for most CSE/IT students who put in the work.

The campus itself is Mohali — so you're 30 minutes from Chandigarh, which means actual city infrastructure, hospitals, markets, entertainment. The hostel food in C Block mess is genuinely bad on Tuesdays and Fridays for reasons nobody has been able to explain. The library has surprisingly good resources if you ask the right librarian (sir on the second floor, near the window).

I'm in my 3rd year now. I have a 7.4 CGPA, one internship under my belt, and a placement offer from Infosys Power Programmer track at 9.5 LPA. None of this was inevitable. Most of it came from showing up to the right things — the coding club meetings even when I was tired, the placement prep sessions even when I thought I wasn't ready.

If you're starting out here and feeling like you made the wrong choice: you didn't. But you do have to make it the right choice. That part is on you.