Hello aspirant,
In 1st year there will be a lot of courses consisting of many courses which are not even the core courses of your departmentdue to that u will be exposed to the aspects of almost every branch, so if your interest grows in some other stream you can think of changing branch after 1st year, so your skill development will depend on your interest. Generally, a skill that you can develop in 1st year is coding as it is useful irrespective of branch as everything is going digital. You will be most probably taught "c" or maybe some other progamming language & if you are interested then even if your branch is not CS you can learn another languages like c++ etc & can write programmes. If you are interested in some other branch but CPI is not sufficient for branch change then you can think of taking a minor in that department if available.Besides these things you should try to interact with your classmates, teachers & seniors etc.
Thank You!!!

Dear aspirant,
The skills are required for 1st year engineering students are c language and some basics in micro processor and some basics in aurdino board. If you have more interested then you can also learn data structures. Hope it helps you.
Thank you.