In my eyes nothing beats out a degree. You can have a degree in janitorial skills and still be able to get certified if you put your mind to it. A CS degree beats certs but not experience. If your school has any kind of internships I would look into them to see if you can get entry level experience. If they dont have an IT internship take what they have and try to kick it with the IT people there and try to get good with them and they can point you in the right direction to maybe get an opportunity coming up there or something they might know of from a friend. They may have a project that is coming up with that you can volunteer on to get some experience. As you can see we in IT love to help out. That should be all college students thinking when going for that degree and getting any experience you can. Th