A low CGPA can often become a major hurdle during campus placements, particularly when companies set academic cut-offs. For Naman Bansal, a B.Tech graduate from Jaypee Institute of Information Technology (JIIT), Noida, his overall 6 CGPA meant he could not sit for even a single campus placement.Today, the same student is working as an SDE-2 at Microsoft, with a reported compensation of around Rs 90 lakh per annum.His journey, however, was not built on his academic score. It was built on competitive programming, persistence and a strategy of highlighting what he could do rather than repeatedly drawing attention to what he could not.
When 6 CGPA closed the campus placement door
Bansal completed his B.Tech in Computer Science from JIIT between 2016 and 2020. Because of his low overall CGPA, he was unable to participate in campus placement opportunities.Even his resume did not prominently mention his CGPA. Instead, he focused on his programming abilities and achievements in competitive coding.He had already established himself as a strong programmer, earning the Candidate Master title on Codeforces with a rating of 1918. His achievements also included a global Rank 1 in the CodeChef October Long Challenge and several top rankings in competitive programming contests.But getting companies to notice those skills was not easy.
Rejected by Adobe, then changed the game
One of his early setbacks came when he applied for an Adobe internship.Bansal performed well in the initial rounds, but according to the account he shared, he was eventually rejected by HR because of his low CGPA.Instead of allowing that rejection to define his prospects, he focused on getting relevant industry experience.Through a referral, he secured an internship at MakeMyTrip, where he worked on projects involving GoLang, Kafka and APIs. That experience gave him something valuable that was missing from his profile: industry experience from a recognised technology company.MakeMyTrip subsequently became an important addition to his resume.That helped him secure a full-time opportunity at D. E. Shaw as a Member Technical.
The rejected candidate was later hired by Adobe
His career took another unexpected turn.After working at D. E. Shaw, Bansal was hired by Adobe as a Member of Technical Staff in 2020.The company that had earlier rejected him for an internship was now employing him as a full-time technology professional.He spent around two years at Adobe before moving to Microsoft in December 2022, where he is currently listed as an SDE-2.His professional profile lists expertise in C++, Go, MySQL, Kafka, REST APIs, data structures and algorithms, dynamic programming and competitive programming.
His CGPA did not disappear — but it stopped defining him
Bansal’s story does not suggest that academic performance is unimportant. Rather, it demonstrates that a student’s profile can contain many dimensions beyond a single number.When his CGPA prevented him from accessing campus placements, he built evidence of his technical ability through competitive programming, internships and projects.His journey from being unable to sit for campus placements at JIIT to working at MakeMyTrip, D. E. Shaw, Adobe and finally Microsoft shows how one opportunity can lead to another.For students worried about a low CGPA, the lesson is not to ignore academics. It is to understand that one weak area does not necessarily have to become the definition of an entire career.Sometimes, when one door remains closed because of a number on a marksheet, the answer is to build enough strength elsewhere that another door eventually opens.Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available information and social media/profile details and is intended for educational and informational purposes only.
