I was in your position at the start of the pandemic. I personally think I wasted a lot of time doing side projects and hackathons when they didn’t seem to matte

I was in your position at the start of the pandemic. I personally think I wasted a lot of time doing side projects and hackathons when they didn’t seem to matter that much, I got way more interviewers when I put a few part time jobs at school and a non profit on my resume than I ever got off side projects. I applied to around 200 companies and got an interview with around 5 of them (one of them ended up being an internship at a FANG where I now work full time). In my opinion you should try to apply to as many jobs as possible every day and by as many as possible I mean 15-20. Dont bother with a cover letter I never got a interview for any of the applications where I wrote a cover letter and demonstrated “interest and value” like you’ll read online. I also recommend that even though it sounds like you’re in your last year you should also apply to internships at the big tech companies. I applied to around 140 companies in my senior year and got rejected by all the full time positions but got accepted into a FANG internship after I graduated its the best way to get into a FANG (if thats your goal). The other thing I recommend is focusing on leetcode as much as possible. Also for new grad positions they are mostly looking for keywords relating to the languages they mention in the job posting to be explicitly in your resume. I recommend taking some time to use some standard resume format and make sure your resume is written with bullets that are in the “i accomplished x as measured by Y by doing Z” format. Make sure whatever you say in Z matches the keywords in the job postings you are applying to. Also a small tip is that if you apply in the morning it does seem more likely that a human will read your resume. Also one other thing I will add, referrals really do make a difference. My friend was a low level IT contractor at a FANG and he gave me a referral and out of 10 applications only the one he referred me for ended up getting an interview for me.