> Take academic courses instead of practical courses. I would caveat this with: Make sure you have some structured activity that forces you to write a bunch of

> Take academic courses instead of practical courses. I would caveat this with: Make sure you have some structured activity that forces you to write a bunch of code. If you're not competing in ICPC or doing something similar, you should be taking courses like Operating Systems, Compilers, etc. that require significant coding assignments almost every semester. Theory classes like Discrete Math, Theory of Computation, Algorithms, etc. are great, but it's important to have structured practice to make sure you're developing your coding skills as well. Most students won't actually complete coding projects on their own time, so it's good to put yourself in situations that force you to do it. Overall great advice though.