Some universities offer what's known as a sandwich degree. in which at the end of your second year you have the option of spending a year in industry, the idea is that the student gets real world experience (and is able to put this on a CV) and the employer gets a very willing young worker to help with tasks. You find that after graduation a lot of companies re-hire the students they had on placement.

Ah - it functions the same as a summer internship between junior and senior years here in the States, although it is for a full year.

Question - are your college degrees three years or four years? Ours are generally four, called freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior.

As far as I'm aware they're almost universally 3 years (unless they include a placement year). I'm basing this on anecdotal evidence such as what I remember from applying to different universities and the fact that most of my friends are graduating a year earlier than myself.

We also don't have nicknames for the years here, though I wouldn't be surprised if we start adopting it, we already have an official event called "freshers week" in the first week of the first year.

It's basically called Co-Op in the U.S.

In India, during your final year or maybe 3rd yr of your engineering degree, lots of companies come to campus to recruit. They take written tests, a whole set of interviews of potential candidates. In my Uni, you're allowed to apply to a maximum of 40 companies(the list of all companies is known beforehand). You're usually allowed to say yes to only 1 company and you're out of the placement cell for your batch. This is how recruitment works in india, and you have a job when you graduate. Infact, a year before you graduate. But quite a lot of companies in these trying times (Gulp!) gave offer letters but then took them back.

Anyhow, to answer the original question: it would be better to start with a smaller venture. There are loads of startup that would be willing to hire bright people. And in my opinion these are the best places to start out. You have more responsibilities, smaller teams so better vision of the effect your work has, infact all in all more stress. Look at websites like SnapTalent or ask ppl here in HN if they have some ventures that suit your skill set.

Enlighten a European. Is there some reason you put extra focus on getting good grades the last year, do employers focus mainly on the last year grades?

(On a related note, I have to find a placement of open source nature for my second year as it's my major. :P)

As a rule it's because the years have different weights assigned to them, so as an example first year counts towards about 20% of the final degree classification, second year 35% and third year 45%

EDIT:

Just to help avoid confusion I'll reiterate that this is talking about universities in England

This is not the way it works at any reputable college I've ever heard of here in the States. I've been on many recruiting teams and cumulative GPA is always done as a straight average over credit hours (which are typically evenly distributed over each of the standard four years).

Most UK universities don't do it like that.

Usually, the first year is worth nothing, the second year is 1/3 and the final year is 2/3.

Sometimes you do an extra year inbetween the second and thid year if you take a year out in indsutry.

Also, college is a different thing to University in the UK.

You always want to do well, but if you don't do well early, you can at least point to improvement in your later semesters as you "got the hang of" college. This improvement is also helpful for graduate schools, although a magic improvement senior year is not as good as steady improvement over the years.

Traditionally, full-time hiring is complete for good employees (in all disciplines) by the winter break of the fourth (senior) year, where there's some clause that you can't get terrible grades in your last semester.