Getting tech internship as Stanford sophomore (..◜ᴗ◝..)

Hi guys!! Hope everyone's doing well (˶>⩊<˶) Wanted to make this post because I'm relatively new to the recruiting/internship sphere!! I'm a rising Stanford sophomore majoring in CS. Last summer, I interned at a small startup doing full-stack web dev work with the MERN stack. This summer, I'm interning at a medical research center where I'm building AI agentic pipelines for disease treatment (basically a GPT wrapper 🙂‍↕️...). I'm also interning on Stanford campus as a research intern where I'm doing data science work.

For summer 2027, I'd love to try for some larger companies/startups!! My interest is in security/systems, so I'm more interested in companies like Cisco/Cloudflare/Palo Alto Networks, but I'd be happy with any internship haha!! Here's what I've heard, though, about the current state of things in recruiting:

1. Everything is cooked (,,>﹏<,,) referrals are apparently the only way you get your foot through the door?

2. Start applying for summer 2027 internships in September/start Leetcoding before then so you're ready for interviews (which sounds pretty reasonable, so I'll probably do that!)

3. If you don't have lots of impressive experience, you should work on personal projects that show your skills/interests/passion.

I'm really sure where to start... I'll probably start Leetcoding and working on personal projects before September, but I'm not really sure what else to do when recruiting season comes around. I heard networking is important, but I'm a somewhat introverted person so I've never really gotten the hang of career fairs... (..◜ᴗ◝..) Should I up my game and try to be more involved in career fairs/coffee chats/Linkedin? Should I reach out to Stanford alumni or professors? I feel a little lost :((

Thank you guys so much!!! Sending hugs and cinnamon rolls!!!