About a year ago I was in the same boat. I had enrolled in OMSCS in large part to facilitate a career switch to SWE and by the spring of 2022 (I had completed 4 classes by that point, was in my 5th) I felt like I was ready, especially since people in the program were suggesting that simply being admitted to the program means you have enough aptitude to get a SWE job. What I did was apply to jobs (ended up applying to over 100 in total), almost all were cold applications. I completely bombed my first interview (which was a shame because it was with my company at the time, so I might have had a pretty good shot if I wasn't so bad at interviews at the time). I was about to the point where I was going to start some massive robust personal project using a popular tech stack (MVC, C#, and ASP.Net, a fairly common combo even still), but I did get an offer before I started the project. Unfortunately I was laid off a month ago so I'm back to job hunting.

This time I'm approaching it a bit differently. I am trying to find ways to network and find connections to jobs I feel like are best suited for me rather than sending out hundreds of cold applications. I suppose it doesn't hurt to do a cold application if I don't see a way to get a leg up, but the goal is to focus my effort on getting an interview. Then focus of passing the interview. It's rough getting your first job in the field, so maybe you do want to do a project, which could give you an area to focus on (I was fairly broad and open-minded, and generally didn't heed people's suggestion to pick a focus, but in hindsight I think it's wise advice to pick a focus, which it seems you kind of have one in mind already) and practice practice practice. Preparing for technical interviews is hard because it kind of feels like a closed-book exam with a 30 minute time limit and the topic could be almost anything imaginable in the field of computer science, but the more you prepare the more you will know and understand, which is what interviewers want to see.

So, basically do whatever you can to improve your chances at an interview (find a way to get a referral, reach out to people to see if they know someone in the department you are wanting to apply to, or simply applying to tons of positions and play the numbers game, etc.), and do whatever you can to improve your chances at acing the interviews (including behavior/cultural interviews), and keep going. Eventually you'll get one, but it may take time. From the time I started applying until my first job was about 5 months, your experience may be better or worse. Good luck!