DSA vs AI/LLMs - What should a 2027 CSE student prioritize?

As a 2027 CSE student, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to decide where to spend my time.

On one side, there’s DSA and competitive programming — problem solving, algorithms, contests, and interview preparation.

On the other, there’s AI/LLMs, full-stack development, cloud, agents, RAG, and real-world projects — skills that seem increasingly relevant to the kind of software being built today.

And then there are internships, hackathons, open-source contributions, system design, and college academics on top of all that. :sweat_smile:

So I’m curious:

If you were a CSE student graduating in 2027, how would you divide your time between DSA and modern development/AI skills?

Would you:

  • Focus heavily on DSA until placements?

  • Maintain DSA while building AI/full-stack projects?

  • Prioritize projects and learn DSA mainly for interviews?

  • Follow some completely different approach?

I’d especially love to hear from people who have already gone through placements/internships.

What actually helped you the most when you started interviewing?