I'm finishing up my degree right now, and over the course of it I've gotten the CompTIA A+, Security+ and Cloud Essentials certs and will be taking the Network+ exam this week. I have a cert for Windows 10 from Microsoft, as well. The most likely things to get you in the door of a company are Network+ and A+, and practical experience. If your program doesn't provide you with hands-on experience, I'd start looking for some way to get that either through your current job by taking on different responsibilities if they'll allow it, or look for an internship with a company more closely aligned to what you want to do.
I'm not gonna lie, my end-goal is to work at LTT ? so I may or may not really know what I'm doing but essentially just seek out every opportunity you can. There are a lot of free resources, too if you know your Google-fu ?
I have hundreds of servers world wide with the 9211-8i. Its pretty great and even at volume, have a very low (<1%) fallout rate after 3 years 24/7 use. There is nothing better at the 6Gbps bandwidth.