u/Harshith_Reddy_Dev

We have already banned u/Motor_Aide_1035 many days ago for unsolicited voucher/discount DMs, but they are still messaging users through alt accounts and their main. Stay cautious and avoid engaging with such offers.

These vouchers are often obtained through student programs, employee benefits, regional promotions, event giveaways, or other limited-use campaigns. They are not meant to be resold or shared publicly. Using them outside their intended purpose can violate the provider’s policies and may put your account, certifications, or exam results at risk.

These sellers will gaslight you in countless ways saying “bro nothing will happen” or “many people bought from me and their accounts are still active.” Remember, a salesman will say anything to close a sale.

Sleeping peacefully without worrying about your exam results or certifications getting revoked is worth far more than any unofficial discount.

If you receive such DMs, report them to the mod team. Further violations will lead to permanent bans.

Capstone is 6 credits and very different from ECS.

You can finally make a proper software-only project instead of forcing random hardware integration for no reason.

Teams can only have 4 members from the same specialization. So AIML students can’t team up with core students and stuff like that.

By now, most people have already pre-booked professors, so if you still don’t have a guide, be fast and talk to a prof immediately.

Also, we didn’t have daily biometric attendance for Capstone but y’all do now. And yes, they take it seriously.

They literally debarred around 270 ish final year students over SDP attendance and those people were left in limbo regarding their final reviews. SDP and Capstone are basically the same (4-1 capstone and 4-2 sdp/internship)

Capstone Rubrics (what we had)

Review 1 & 2 (10 + 30 marks)

These two reviews are usually taken by your own guide, so it’s mostly chill unless your prof is weird.

Review 3 (40 marks)

This one is taken by a random panel of professors. Their leniency depends entirely on luck.

One of my friends made a mobile app using Flutter and his panel genuinely couldn’t process the idea that apps can be made using frameworks they don’t know. Meanwhile some panels were super chill and gave 39/40 easily.

So yeah, luck matters a lot here.

Word of advice:

- Wear formals

- Prepare a clean PPT

- Have a smooth demo ready

- Speak confidently

Good presentation and first impressions genuinely help.

Final Report (20 marks)

This gets submitted on VTOP.

College checks plagiarism and your team lead gets invited to a Google Classroom for the Turnitin reports. You get 3 tries.

Honestly it’s pretty chill. It mainly catches blatant copy-pasting from websites. It doesn’t really detect AI properly and simple paraphrasing is usually enough.

Almost everyone in my batch got either 18 or 20.

Grades

It’s absolute grading.

A lot of people got A grades because of harsh or rigid panels during Review 3. B and S grades are basically outliers.

Choosing a Professor

Choose your guide carefully.

Almost every professor straight up demands a research paper before accepting your team. So discuss all expectations beforehand instead of getting blindsided later.

Now for my experience.

I had a bastard of a prof (idc if you read this, do something funny and I’ll post your deeds on LinkedIn).

We were betrayed by another known prof at the last moment, so we were forced to take this bastard.

This guy knows absolutely nothing or at least never tries to show interest, but still demands a paper. Whatever, we still managed to make a pretty good paper ourselves.

Whenever we had doubts regarding Turnitin reports, modifications, formatting, or literally anything, this mf did absolutely nothing.

And the best part? This scummy mf waited until AFTER final paper acceptance to suddenly say he wouldn’t contribute to the conference fees. Mind you, by then we obviously couldn’t remove his name anymore.

Conference fee was 9k total. We had 6 authors including that bastard. That’s literally 1500 per person.

Bud couldn’t pay 1500 breh.

And fine, I wouldn’t even complain if he had contributed something meaningful to the paper. But nah, freeloaded the entire thing and waited till the last moment to pull this stunt.

The funniest part is VIT literally provides around 20k per academic year to each prof specifically for conference fees and publication-related expenses. This is literally the exact purpose of that funding.

We literally pleaded with this bastard saying we already had travel expenses (conference was in Delhi), alumni fees, degree fees and all this other college nonsense to deal with, so at least show some empathy. Didn’t care at all.

So please mail your prof beforehand and clearly ask:

- Will they contribute to the paper?

- Will they help with conference fees if the paper gets accepted?

Get everything clarified early so they can’t bullshit later.

Or just register for a conference happening after July and ghost the prof after final review 💀

Honestly, best move is to avoid all this drama entirely and pick a good professor who either contributes properly or at least pays their share instead of freeloading.

All voucher-selling, credit-selling, and related spam posts have been removed from the subreddit.

u/iamondemand is back and has already cleaned up a lot over the past few days. I’ve also joined the moderation team as a new mod. I’ll be getting config permissions in the next few days, so AutoMod and other moderation systems will start getting cleaned up and improved as well.

Moderation will now be enforced more actively to keep the community clean, relevant, and useful for everyone.

If you come across any remaining spam, scam attempts, or rule violations, please report them instead of engaging with those posts.

Thanks to everyone who reported posts and helped clean up the subreddit.

AWS has an official list of AWS Academy member institutions:

https://d1.awsstatic.com/onedam/marketing-channels/website/aws/en_US/training/approved/pdfs/aws-academy/academy-member-list.pdf

If your college is in this list, contact your department/HOD/training office and ask them about:

• AWS Academy access

• AWS Skill Builder activation

• AWS certification vouchers

• Enrolling students into AWS Academy courses

This is only for students officially enrolled in an AWS Academy course through their institution.

A lot of students spend $100-150 on certifications and third-party AWS courses without realizing their institution may already provide official AWS Academy benefits.

I also wrote a guide explaining:

• how AWS Academy access works

• how to activate AWS Skill Builder

• how voucher redemption works

Blog:

https://dev.to/harshith_reddy_dev/how-aws-academy-students-can-activate-aws-skill-builder-and-claim-free-aws-exam-vouchers-1oo2

​

For 23 batch, VIT shared a Google Form around February for re-enabling AWS Academy access, which allowed students to activate AWS Skill Builder and claim free AWS certification vouchers.

Thanks to u/verstappen_left_ball for sharing the mail and redemption process.

In 3rd year, you’ll have a compulsory placements-related course called AWS Solution Architecture (CSE2025). It’s usually handled by SCOPE faculty along with AWS Academy labs and online modules.

After completing the required modules/quizzes, students can get 100% off AWS exam vouchers for free.

u/verstappen_left_ball himself redeemed:

1 Foundational voucher (CCP)

1 Associate voucher (SAA)

So if you’re from 24 batch or upcoming batches

• don’t rush into buying AWS vouchers at full price

• purchasing third-party AWS courses for certifications

• paying vendors for summer internship/industrial course credits related to AWS

There’s a good chance you’ll get official AWS Academy access and vouchers later through college itself.

Here’s my blog explaining the activation and redemption process:

https://dev.to/harshith\_reddy\_dev/how-aws-academy-students-can-activate-aws-skill-builder-and-claim-free-aws-exam-vouchers-1oo2

At the end of your internship did they ask for

• Internship completion certificate or

• Only the reviews and final report was enough

https://preview.redd.it/akw0rajr3vxg1.png?width=1171&format=png&auto=webp&s=6078ce3d2e7a3adb5d309878eaab7c6c7a9e95ec

Just got my results back and passed the AWS Solutions Architect Associate. Boom. 911!

Huge shoutout to u/madrasi2021 for the preparation post and the ETC rewards post. Because of that, I managed to take this for free using a 100% voucher from ETC rewards back in October 2025.

Here is exactly what I used to prep:

• Stephane Maarek's Udemy Course
• Tutorials Dojo Practice Tests

Glad to have this one in the bag. Next up is the GCP ACE, since I have a free voucher from the Get Certified program back in April 2025. On to the next!

Edit:- My ccp is renewed as well which I wrote almost a year ago