Soumya applied to over 200 companies off-campus across his first two years. Every application was rejected. His CGPA had dropped below 6.5 by second year. Many companies use CGPA as a first-round filter: students below the threshold are not considered regardless of their actual skills. This creates a structural disadvantage for students who invest heavily in competitive programming and problem-solving but underperform in academic metrics.
The off-campus hiring ecosystem has a second filter that is rarely discussed openly: institution name. A student from IIT or NIT with the same competitive programming profile as Soumya would have received interview calls. Soumya did not. The system was not designed to find him. He was building 43 LPA skills inside a hiring ecosystem that could not see past the brand of his university. Head here to read how a small town family’s 43 LPA moment looks like on stage – parents shared their experience on stage. Beyond this, this data is not a placement statistic. This is the full story. Placement Day Hub: 3,500 offers, every stat
When the US-based MNC’s on-campus hiring was announced at Parul University, Soumya’s CGPA would have disqualified him under standard eligibility rules. In most universities, that would have been the end of the conversation. The student does not meet the criteria. The student is not considered. The opportunity passes and the 200 rejections become 201.
What the Training & Placement Cell Did: Direct HR Advocacy
The Training and Placement Cell did not stop at the eligibility filter. They took the initiative to communicate directly with the company’s HR team and ensure Soumya was considered for the opportunity. They did this because they had observed his preparation trajectory over three years: the competitive programming, the daily discipline, the 200 rejections that had sharpened his skills even as they crushed his confidence.
They recognised potential that a transcript does not capture. And they did the work to ensure that potential got a chance to be seen.
“I can never forget in my life the support TNP provided me. I will always be thankful to them.”
This is not a generic recommendation letter. This is not a bulk email to HR. This is a placement cell identifying a specific student by name, recognising that the CGPA filter would exclude someone with demonstrable technical ability that exceeded many higher-CGPA candidates, and personally advocating with the hiring company for an exception. The company agreed to consider him. He cleared every single stage of the selection process. The Training & Placement Cell did not guarantee him a job. They guaranteed him a chance and he did the rest.
IMPACT Training: The Structured Preparation That Rebuilt Confidence
The Training & Placement Cell’s support did not begin with advocacy. It began much earlier with the IMPACT training programme. IMPACT covers Data Structures and Algorithms through C++ and Java, full-stack web development using the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js), competitive programming, and professional grooming including resume building, LinkedIn profile development, and presentation skills. The programme runs alongside academics with daily sessions for second and third-year students. You too can build
Soumya already knew how to code. That was never the gap. What IMPACT gave him was something his three years of self-study hadn’t: a way to organise what he already knew into something a hiring process could actually evaluate. Which topics carried the most weight. What assessments at target companies were actually testing. How to work through a problem when the clock was running. How to explain your thinking out loud without losing the thread. The daily sessions didn’t teach him coding. They taught him how to convert coding ability into placement outcomes, which, as it turns out, is a completely different skill. If you wish to get a placement in MNCs, delay not and enrol into Parul University’s software engineering courses after 12th!
The Training and Placement Cell layered on top of that. Mock tests built around real company assessment formats. Mock interviews that ran like actual technical and HR rounds, not practice versions of them. Timed problem-solving that made pressure a familiar condition rather than a destabilising one. For someone who had spent months collecting rejections and had hit a wall bad enough to consider quitting entirely, this wasn’t just preparation. The structure itself was the intervention. Confidence, when it had been worn down that far, doesn’t come back through motivation. It comes back through repetition, through small wins stacking up, through showing up to a mock interview and realising you can hold your ground. That’s what the process rebuilt. Quietly, session by session, before the MNC ever called his name.
Mentorship: Swapnil Sir and the Belief That Held When Everything Else Broke
Soumya gives specific credit to Swapnil Sir (now Dean of PIET) and the TNP team (HR and management) for mentorship and continuous encouragement. The mentorship was not academic tutoring. It was the sustained belief that the student could succeed, communicated through regular interaction, guidance on preparation strategy, and emotional support during the period when 200 rejections had brought him to a breaking point where he was, in his own words, done with everything.
The TNP team maintained this belief even when Soumya himself was not sure. This is the difference between a placement cell that processes students and one that invests in them individually. Processing means running drives, posting eligibility criteria, and forwarding resumes. Investing means knowing a student by name, tracking his preparation trajectory across semesters, and fighting with HR when the system would have excluded him.
This is what Mr Gurcharan Singh, Director of Training and Placement, means when he says the cell’s role is to make students into the kind of people that companies genuinely want. It is not just about arranging drives. It is about recognising potential that a transcript does not capture, and then doing the work to ensure that potential gets a chance to be seen.
The Student-as-Trainer Cycle: How the System Reinforces Itself
The best part about Soumya was – he stayed back to educate and train students. After his placement, Soumya stayed.
He came back to the Training and Placement Cell as a trainer. Not a guest speaker, not a one-time panel appearance, regular sessions, scheduled, ongoing. Juniors and batchmates sitting across from someone who had just been where they were. He covered competitive programming, DSA, and interview techniques. And the part nobody formally schedules: how to psychologically survive a rejection streak long enough to outlast it.
He had 200 of those on record. Nobody in the room was going to question whether he understood the material.
He calls it fulfilling, and the word doesn’t sound like filler when he says it. Watching someone he’d worked with get placed, seeing the thing actually work for another person, gave the experience a kind of closure that the offer letter alone hadn’t. A few hours a day, kept clean from his studies and projects. No great sacrifice involved. The work gave something back, so it didn’t drain the same way.
What this produces, quietly and without any formal design, is a system that doesn’t lose its best knowledge when students graduate. Soumya walked out with an offer. He also walked back in with three years of hard-won understanding about what the process actually demands and handed it to the next batch directly. No dilution, no translation layer. Just someone who had recently failed 200 times sitting down with people who were currently failing, and showing them what came next. Inspired? Manifesting dream package already? Well that’s natural, explore engineering courses after 12th of Parul University!
The Broader Ecosystem: What the Same Infrastructure Produces at Scale
Soumya’s 43 LPA is one data point from the Training & Placement Cell. The system operates at a scale that no single story captures. Mr Gurcharan Singh directs a cell that produced 3,500+ placements in the 2026 season: the highest ever for the university and the only university in Gujarat at this scale.
- 459 students received 2+ offers
- 27 students received 4+ offers
- 1,337 offers were above 5 LPA
- 23 marquee offers exceeded 20 LPA
- Mass recruiters: Capgemini (157 offers, largest single recruiter), TCS (200+), Cognizant (86), LTM (79)
- Package progression: 22.5 LPA (2023 highest) to 43 LPA (2026) to 60 LPA (2027 early, Tanish Patel and Suraj Jagtap at Microsoft)
- ASSOCHAM awarded Parul University as the Best University in Placements for 3 consecutive years
The system does not produce only headline packages. It produces volume at every tier. The same IMPACT training, the same mock interviews, the same mentorship cycle that produced Soumya’s 43 LPA also produced Capgemini’s 157 offers and TCS’s 200+. The infrastructure is the same. The outcomes vary because each student brings different skills and different timelines. But the system serves all of them.
And beyond placements: PIERC (254 startups, Rs 20 crore+ funding) demonstrates that the university’s mission goes beyond securing jobs. The entrepreneurial infrastructure develops the same problem-solving and persistence skills that competitive programming builds. The mindset that drove Soumya through 200 rejections is the same mindset that drives student founders through failed prototypes and investor rejections. The Training & Placement Cell and PIERC are two expressions of the same principle: build a business-ready mindset that empowers students to carve their own path and scale at their own pace.
Head here to read the story of Tanish Patel: 60 LPA at Microsoft
FAQs
How does Parul University's placement cell help students?
IMPACT training, mock tests, mock interviews, mock assessments, HR advocacy for deserving candidates who may not meet standard cutoffs, mentorship from named instructors (Swapnil Sir, now Dean of PIET), student-as-trainer cycle where students mentor juniors.
Can students with low CGPA get good placements at Parul University?
Soumya Dhakad had below 6.5 CGPA and was placed at 43 LPA at a US-based MNC. Tanish Patel had 7.04 CGPA and was placed at 60 LPA at Microsoft. Both achieved top placements through competitive programming and skill-based preparation rather than academic metrics alone. The Training & Placement Cell personally advocated for Soumya's eligibility with the company's HR when his CGPA would have excluded him. The system treats eligibility as a problem to solve, not a gate to close.
What is the highest placement at Parul University?
60 LPA: Tanish Patel and Suraj Jagtap (B.Tech CSE, Microsoft, 2027 batch). 43 LPA: Soumya Dhakad (B.Tech CSE, US-based MNC, 2026 batch). 3,500+ total placements. 23 marquee above 20 LPA. 459 students with 2+ offers. Progression: 22.5 LPA (2023) to 43 LPA (2026) to 60 LPA (2027). ASSOCHAM Best University in Placements for 3 consecutive years. NAAC A++ (CGPA 3.55).
