CLIMB DTU 2022 Experience

What is CLIMB DTU?

It is a community of passionate women that encourages ambition, helps navigate careers in STEM, and prepares pre-professional women to overcome internal obstacles and have diverse skills needed to thrive in the industry after graduating.

What was the application process?

For the application, we need to fill out a google form wherein we were supposed to submit our resume and answer a few Essay type questions. You need to keep an eye on the LinkedIn page of CLIMB DTU in order to know about the openings.

General Overview

This year, the program duration was of 4 weeks. All the selected applicants were assigned an individual mentor. There were 4/5 mentees under each mentor. A series of sessions were conducted during this span of 4 weeks on various topics like resume building, acing competitive coding and DSA, web and app development, open-source, etc… I will be documenting my experience during these 4 weeks through this blog.

WEEK 1

The goal of this week was to get familiar with the program agenda. We had an orientation session for the same during which we were explained in detail about all the things. We were soon assigned our mentors. My mentor was Kajal Gupta di. We also had a session with our mentor. We got familiar with each other through this ice-breaking session. Then we had a discussion over crafting resumes and how should one study technical subjects in a systematic manner. My mentor was very helpful. Along with guiding us, she also provided us with a few resources to study these subjects.

WEEK 2

We had 3 sessions this week, 2 of which were general sessions and 1 was along with our mentor.

The first general session was regarding Competitive Programming. In this session, we were guided regarding how should we get started with CP, how should we approach the question, how should we manage time between Coding and Dev, etc…

The second general session was on skill development. In this session, various types of development like Web dev, App dev, Game dev, Machine learning, etc… were introduced to us. We were taught and guided on each of these topics. This session helped us differentiate the types of development and pick the most suitable one for us. We were also provided detailed roadmaps for all the above-mentioned paths.

In the 3rd session, we had a one-on-one chat with our mentor. We asked all our queries and got our doubts cleared related to different topics during this session.

WEEK 3

So, this was a fun week. We had a 2.5hr long coding contest where all the mentees at CLIMB competed with each other. The test was supposed to be taken on Codeforces but was later shifted to HackerRank due to some last moment issues. A fun session was also arranged for us this week on Google Meet wherein all the members of CLIMB interacted with each other, shared their stories, played games, and networked well with each other.

WEEK 4

This week a master session was arranged for us. Information about various programs was shared with us by past scholars. We also had the opportunity to ask our questions and directly interact with them. In total, 6 programs were covered in this master session which are as follow:

[1] Getting Started with Hackathons with Neha Goyal

[2] Twitter DevelopHer — Anshika Jain

[3] LinkedIn CoachIn — Pooja Narula

[4] MITACS — Manika Jain

[5] Microsoft Engage — Riya Dev Varshney

[6] ADOBE WIT — Ishika Joshi

That’s all about my experience at CLIMB DTU. I met some amazing girls through this program and learned many new things. It helped me enhance my perspective, streamline my thought process, and gave me a holistic view of how can one make the most out of an opportunity. Forever grateful to CLIMB DTU for selecting me and giving me a chance to be a part of this program : )