Sarah Chen

Hackathons are the fastest way to build a portfolio. You ship something real in a weekend, meet people from other courses and practise presenting. Deakin teams have placed in the national finals before, go for it.

The single highest-leverage thing I did at uni: solving 2 LeetCode easies a week from year 1. Not grinding, just consistency. By the time Google interviews came around in final year, mediums felt routine. Start slow, stay regular.

deakin.edu.auDeakin StudentsOfficial student hub for units, support and key dates.

Referral thread for Deakin CS students applying to software engineering internships at Google. I can refer a handful of people this round. How it works: apply through the official careers site first, then reply here with the role you applied for, one project you are proud of (GitHub link), and which units you did well in. I only refer people I have spoken to, so I will book a free 15 minute chat through a Sodu session request. Be honest about what a referral does: it gets your resume read by a human, it does not skip a single interview. Please do not DM me your phone number, reply here.

SIT232 review since people keep asking: it's the most important unit in the CS degree. Object oriented design is what every internship interviewer probed me on. The custom program assignment is your chance to build something real. I built a tiny game engine and talked about it in every interview for two years. Do NOT copy the task sheet example. Pick something you actually care about, scope it small, and iterate. The design patterns lectures feel abstract in week 6 but they are the vocabulary of every code review you'll ever sit in. Attend the labs; the tutors basically hand you the assignment structure.

theodinproject.comThe Odin ProjectFree full-stack curriculum used by a lot of our IT mentors.

Google interview prep that actually mattered: 1) NeetCode 150, not random problems. 2) Mock interviews with a friend, out loud, on a whiteboard. 3) One system design primer read twice. Everything else was noise.

neetcode.ioNeetCode 150: curated coding interview problemsA structured list of 150 problems grouped by pattern, with free video explanations for each one.

I have to learn Java

Unpopular opinion: your GPA matters less than one finished side project. I got the Google internship with a 74 average and a half-decent distributed key-value store on GitHub. Recruiters can't run your transcript.

For first years asking where to start with Python beyond SIT102: build a CLI tool you'll actually use. Mine was a script that renamed my lecture downloads. Ugly code, real problem, learned more than any tutorial.