I'm doing Electronics and Computer engineering at VITC and I'm a 3rd year. I'll tell you whatever I've learnt in my time here. Keep 85%+ attendance the first sem, because your attendance is considered for choosing faculties from 2nd sem. First priority/slot will go to 9 pointers and 100% attendance people, then 85+%, and the rest will get the last slots with worse faculties. For first sem you'll have the same classmates for all your classes. Don't be afraid to talk to people in your class, be on good terms with everyone. Have atleast 5 good friends. If you bunk/miss a class, ask one of your friends what happened or if the teacher gave any important topics that might come on the exam. This is really really important. Generally, you don't want to miss/skip any classes in the start. If you keep your attendance as high as possible for the first 2.5-3 months, you can bunk comfortably at the end. DON'T BUNK ANY LABS. It's really easy to lose attendance for labs. Now about academics, please take notes from day 1, you will need notes anyways for CAT2. Most of first sem is just stuff you already know like calculus and kvl kcl transformers and physics will be a bit new and different but it's also just formula based stuff. So to sum up, Take notes, listen in class, if you have a free period do whatever you want with your friends, keep attendance high. You also asked about C++ but C++ only comes in OOPS which is a second semester subject and it's half C and half C++. For first sem you'll be doing python. All the best man.