Tier 3 college CSE 2025 grad, no internships, 1 year gap — is a tech role still possible?

Hey everyone,

I graduated in 2025 with a CSE degree from a Tier 3 college. Despite applying everywhere, I couldn't land a single tech role — not even an internship during college. It's been a rough stretch and now I'm sitting on close to a year's gap with no professional experience on paper.

Here's the thing though — I'm not starting from zero skill-wise. I'm genuinely good at coding and have real hands-on experience building projects on my own. I just don't have the "official" experience that most job postings ask for, and I feel like that gap + no brand-name college is working against me before recruiters even look at what I can actually do.

So I wanted to ask people who've been through something similar:

* Has anyone here successfully broken into a tech role after a gap year and zero internship experience?

* Did you find that showcasing personal/self-built projects actually moved the needle with recruiters, or did it barely matter without a referral?

* Any specific strategies that worked for you — contributing to open source, freelancing, cold outreach, upskilling in a specific stack, etc.?

* How did you address the gap year in interviews without it becoming a red flag?

* Does it make sense to pick and go deep into one specific domain (like Data Science, Cloud, or AI/ML) instead of staying a generalist SDE, given my background? Would specializing actually improve my odds, or does it narrow my options too much at this stage?

I'm not looking for sympathy, just real talk from people who've navigated this. Any advice, even harsh, is welcome. Thanks in advance.