Each year, over 25–30k students apply for the Microsoft engage program and only 500–700 students get selected for the mentorship. I was one of the lucky candidates to get this amazing opportunity, and I sought to make the most out of it and in the end I received an SWE 2022 summer internship offer at Microsoft ❤. And I'm going to share my journey with you through this article.
Microsoft engage is a mentorship program conducted by Microsoft in the month of June-July, and opens for only 2nd-year students, application opens towards the end of 2nd year (this timeline may vary with college), and students from some specific colleges are selected. People with the following qualifications are allowed to apply to this program:
- Graduation year: 2nd
- CGPA: 7 and above.
- Course: B.Tech/B.E/Dual Degree
- Branch: Any
- No pending backlogs
- Strong CS Fundamentals and Coding principles required
One can find all the details of the application at their career portal. After 2–3 weeks of initial shortlisting through resumes, the shortlisted people received an invite for a test link. Create an amazing resume to pass this round and focus on your CGPA starting from the first year of your college & create good projects and practice problem-solving. The quiz test consists of 15–20 questions in 45 min. And the following topics are important:
- Data structures and Algorithms
- Operating system
- Database Management System
- Java Programming
- Problem solving - with 4–5 coding questions and the rest were reasoning-based & MCQ questions.
After 1 week we received the qualification mail and I qualified to participate in Engage🎉
I was very excited to be mentored by mentors from Microsoft and attend amazing AMA sessions.
The theme for our year was Agile Development where we were supposed to create a Video conferencing application i.e. Clone of Microsoft Teams, find more details of the task on this website.
We were allotted 2 mentors, mine was Tushar and Gulbir sir, along with a group of 6 students. And I couldn't have asked for better mentors ❤, we had 2 meetings weekly, one was a group meeting and the other was a one-on-one meeting with a mentor, to discuss the obstacles during the development phase and get insights about work at Microsoft along with a plethora of informative AMA sessions.
After 5 weeks of hard work and with the help of my mentors and friends(Dev Sharma, Aniket Singh, and Mahera), I was able to complete my project and it was very well received.
Link to my submission: https://github.com/Apurva-tech/unite
And the application: https://unite-apurva.herokuapp.com/
The evaluation of submission could either give me the opportunity to get a direct offer or an interview opportunity.
After 3–4 weeks of evaluation, some people received a direct offer for the internship and I was not one of them 😔. I decided to work hard on my DSA skills and ace the interviews whenever I receive interview slots.
And in the end, all the work did pay off and I was recommended for the Final (AA) round of the interview, i.e I had to give only the final interview. I was asked about my project in the Engage program and a 45 minutes discussion on a real-world application of DSA. The interviewer was very sweet and helped throughout the interview, it was one of the best experiences of my journey. One thing that my mentor Joshika di told me is
"The way you speak and react in interviews, is actually who you really are"
, I kept this in mind, and remained calm during the whole interview, and thought of each aspect of the questions asked.
I gave my interview on August 18 in the morning and was scared to death about the results, and to my surprise, I received the results in the afternoon, my happiness knew no bounds, it was soooo overwhelming (obviously I couldn't stop screaming 😂), I had received the internship offer 🎉🎉
I hope this article helps you in some way. Happy learning ❤
Top comments (27)
Uhh this year, there are 2 tests. One was 10q. MCQ in 30mins and 2nd test is 2q. In 30mins(type=unknown).
So any idea what kind of question they might be and also what level of DSA is required in their interview.
I will be completing my 2nd year in May 2022. Will i be able to apply for this Microsoft Engage Program ?
Yes sure, it also depends on the college I think, if microsoft visits your campus for oncampus internships then definitely!
How hard is the first selection MCQ test? Are there any direct questions ? Around which month does the applications roll out for 2nd year students?
I participated through Microsoft engage program, the test had 15 questions, half of them had MCQ questions rest of them had text based questions. And the time limit was 45 mins. And application rolls out in May
What if Microsoft doesnt come to some campus? ;) Can we apply through careers portal ?
You can but from what I noticed from the selected students is that for almost most of them microsoft visited oncampus!
oops ;(
Is this mentorship program paid?
no, it gives interview opportunity for internship @ Microsoft
Ok...and does it gives swags..🤔🤔
yes
Is this mentorship and then the internship ...limited to only some locations ?? and we have to relocate ??
for us it was location independant as it was online mentorship program, this year I'm not sure
Were you familiar with the technologies you used in project(nodejs, mongodb, expressjs, socketio, etc.,) before you were into the project?
I knew NodeJS (ExpressJS) but not socket.io and WebRTC
Hey , nice article.. I am shortlisted for last round at ms engage 22 but there are only two question this time in time of 30 minutes.
Actually I am amazed that even though your product is so nice but still you did not receive offer ...
by the way do we get chance to visit Microsoft's office or is it completely online
Hey, I got selected for microsoft engage this year
Came across your article before round 2 and it was really helpful :)
Can u suggest some tips or steps to follow now so that I get the internship after the engage program?
Is it only for Java programmers!?
No any 2nd year can apply. There's no specific tech stack needed.
Well I had a small doubt about eligibility,
Are 2023 graduates eligible for the 2022 programme ?
No only 2nd years are eligible
How many questions did you answered correctly ?