Campus placement season typically runs for six to ten weeks. Most final-year students spend the first two weeks panicking, the middle weeks trying to absorb too much at once, and the last few weeks burning out. This plan structures those eight weeks so that the right preparation happens at the right time — and you arrive at your interviews ready, not exhausted.

Before week 1: baseline assessment (3 days)

Before you build any plan, take one mock aptitude test and do one mock technical interview without any preparation. Record your starting point:

  • Which aptitude topics did you get wrong most often?
  • Which CS fundamentals (DBMS, OS, OOP, networking) felt weak?
  • Could you explain your final-year project clearly in under 3 minutes?

This baseline tells you where to invest time. Preparing everything equally is inefficient — you get 80% of the benefit from fixing your 20% weakest areas.

Weeks 1–2: foundations

Aptitude: Build a formula sheet for the 8–10 quant topics that appear most often (percentages, time-speed-distance, profit-loss, series). Do 20–30 timed questions per day. Speed over depth at this stage.

CS fundamentals: One topic per day, not one subject per day. OOP concepts, then SQL basics, then OS scheduling, then networking layers — single focused sessions stick better than marathon subject reviews.

Resume: Finalise your one-page resume this week. Get one person who doesn't know your projects to read it and tell you what they understand. If they can't summarise your projects accurately, your descriptions need work.

Weeks 3–4: technical depth

Coding: 2–3 problems per day on arrays, strings, and basic algorithms. Use a timer. If a problem takes more than 30 minutes, look at the approach — don't sit on it for an hour. Quantity with review beats slow deep-dives at this stage.

Project preparation: Write down every design decision you made in your major project. Why did you choose that database? What would you do differently? What were the limitations? Interviewers dig into projects — know yours better than anyone in the room.

CS revision: SQL joins, indexes, normalisation. Process management, memory management (OS). Inheritance, polymorphism, abstraction (OOP). These come up in almost every technical round.

Weeks 5–6: mock interviews and GD practice

This is the most underused phase. By now you've done the knowledge work — the gap is almost always between knowing the answer and saying it clearly under pressure. That gap closes only through practice, not more studying.

Mock interviews: Do at least two full mock interviews per week. Ask a friend or batchmate to interview you seriously — no hints, real time pressure. Use MockMate AI for voice practice and immediate feedback on your answers.

GD practice: Form a group of 4–6 and run 15-minute group discussions on current topics (work from home, AI in education, startup culture, digital India). Record and review. Watch how often you interrupt, whether your points are structured, and whether you're listening or just waiting to speak.

Weeks 7–8: company-specific preparation and HR rounds

Company research: For each company in your drive, spend 20 minutes reading their recent news, their core products, and their campus hiring profile from previous years. Questions like "Why this company?" and "What do you know about us?" should not catch you off guard.

HR round preparation: Prepare strong answers for: Tell me about yourself, strengths and weaknesses, why this role, a challenge you overcame, where you see yourself in 5 years, and your biggest failure. These should feel natural and specific, not rehearsed.

Logistics: Sort documents, confirm required formats, arrange proper interview attire. Small logistical chaos on interview day has derailed prepared candidates. Handle it early.

During the drives

Don't review notes the morning of an interview. Light review the night before, then sleep. A rested, calm candidate performs better than an anxious one who crammed until 2am.

After each drive, write down every question you were asked. Review your answers honestly. The pattern of what you get right and wrong across multiple companies tells you exactly where to focus before the next one.

MockMate AI lets you run a full voice mock interview anytime — your answers scored on clarity, structure, depth, and relevance. Start free at sanviora.online and use it throughout your preparation, not just at the end.