The most important thing here is if you're asking this question right as you finish college and this is your goal, then you're screwed up. Why? Because resume-

The most important thing here is if you're asking this question right as you finish college and this is your goal, then you're screwed up. Why? Because resume-building for high-profile employers begins long before graduation. Probably the most important factor: internships. Getting an internship is the highest-probability way of getting an offer bar none. If you don't have 1 or preferably 2 internships under your belt then you've made a mistake. The second is that passing interview loops is a skill. It's one that can be studied for, learned and practiced. And if you're serious about this then you should do that. Many recommend CLRS [1] as a source for this. Personally, my choice would be Skiena [2]. Go through all the chapters on sorting and searching, lists, trees, graphs and possibly dynamic programming (some employers use this in interviews, some don't). Backtracking is useful but I've never seen it in an interview. Do the same problems on an actual whiteboard. Don't just think about it. Get comfortable enough with any popular language (eg Javascript, Python, C/C++, Go, Java) such that the syntax and common libraries are second nature. It's not unsalvageable to do this at the end of college (if that's the case). You just need to commit a few months to it. Some will ask "why FAANG?" and the answer is obvious: the money can be life-changing but even aside from that it's an opportunity to learn a lot and having that on your resume is amazing social proof that will quickly eclipse the value of going to a top-tier school. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-3rd-MIT-Press/dp/0262033844 https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-3rd-MIT-Press... [2]: https://www.algorist.com/ https://www.algorist.com/