Do you have friends who graduated 6 months to a year ago? Where did they find jobs and are those places any good? Or even people who you kind of knew. Many companies offer referral bonuses so even somebody you knew casually will usually be willing to help.

I'm not sure what you mean by "applied experience." Do you mean a job? Or do you mean you hacked together some open source projects?

Unless you have experience outside of what you wrote here, you are entry level. You may be a good coder. You may be a better coder than people who have been doing the job for 10 years. But you are still entry level because you haven't yet proved that you can do the coding in a work environment, day in and day out, when somebody else tells you too and not when you feel like it. That is the difference between a job and a hobby.

All that said, if you feel you are better than entry level you will want to look for smaller companies where you will have the ability to quickly get a visible project. It is easier to contact these companies because they usually have a direct email to HR instead of through a 3rd party website and can ask any questions you want free form. Be professional and have somebody double check for grammar.

Good luck.