I have solved some few contests till now and in the last contest which i did after 2 months, i got my first negative rating. I am in college and had to focus on academics for the past 2 months. Now i have 2 months vacation and then internships. So, i aim to reach >1400 to get good internships. Currently, I am 1150-1200. Please give me some tips on how to achieve it. There are many students who are in similar situation and this blog might be an important one. So, please give genuine advices on what questions we should solve and contests that we should appear. Also, give any other resources which one can look upto. Should we learn more advanced topics like graphs, trees, and other algorithms or stick to heaps, hashmaps, stacks for 1400. till what questions should we solve in div2, div 3 contests (C in div2, D in div3 or what?). Thank You!! (btw this is my first blog)
In similar boat, so would love to see suggestions.
To get 1400 u don't need to know any data structures besides arrays and maybe hashmaps.
In div3 u usually have A,B,C,D solved only by your brain or math. And E usually can be solved knowing only basics of graphs, binary search, two pointer approach.
Yes, to reach to this rating I think you should solve Div2 A-C (sometimes super fast A and B when C is too hard is enough, but this is rare) and Div3 A-D (but a bit quickly, I think like in one hr or 1 hr and half)
Topics:
I suggest being familiar with
I think graphs and trees starts appearing from 1300 rated problems, so you will see them in Div3D and Div2C.
Be familiar here, means can notice that this is the topic of the problem and can solve quickly problems rated <= 1400 and just be able to solve 1500 to 1700 is good.
Resources:
Finish USACO Silver EZ and Normal problems: USACO Silver
Finish TLE CP-31 sheet to 1600: TLE Sheet
CSES is also great, but USACO will already tell you to solve from there
Extra Tips
After solving any problem, read the editorial even you solved it yourself, they are really good as well as the discussion under it, there are a lot of smart alternative solutions you may find there.
Don't waste your time solving problems that are very hard like 1900+ at least at this moment
Note that some USACO Normal are insanely hard, so you can skip or look at their solutions
Don't waste your time looking at fancy topics like Segment tree, it is nearly impossible to face at this level, like I think it may appear starting from 1700 but as a standard thing like just when the problem has a sub problem of calc max in range
Fact
I am 1400+ (max 1560+) from the past 60 contests, so I have experience in this level ^__^
can u see my profile and suggest any thing
Sure
Similar to what I said above, but only focus on Div2 A-B and Div3A-C (Div3D is not very far) and don't miss any Div4
Also, from TLE just upto 1300 is very enough and from don't look at USACO silver now
Same prev topics except graph, trees and DP. + Adhoc and being able to solve Div2 A and B fast is the best thing u can do currently, but once you reached 1150, start thinking about those topics and about solving ez Div2C
what about my profile
Same thing I just said, but now Div3D is approachable and try to solve div2 A and B faster
Also, I just saw your profile, I suggest letting your goal be solving A and B in one hr in div2 as well as solving Div3A to C (very fast not normal) and solving Div3D (to be able to do this, look at my first comment here)
i am able to solve div 2A but not be B which topic or how much rating required to solve these div 2B can u please explain
Div2B is not far from ur current rating, try to get familiar with solving problems less than 1300 and this will be enough. And while you are solving, if u face a problem speaking about something u don't know in this rating, learn it, it will mostly be greedy, math, number theory, binary search
thank u so much i have seen ur account on tle leaderboard
Bruh, you solved 1800+ problems and you’re still on specialist level… Looks like a sign to change your methods of practicing
my comments were not for troll if anybody misunderstood this then sorry and i was not checking submissions suspiciousness also i just found them asked the user the question that why did he do that im a python developer so i didnt now anything like macros or all and i got to know about templates first time in my life before that i use to thought that even copying a bit of code is cheating so i all i want to say is thank you temp-for-talk lawragatidu learned lot of intresting things today btw i thought templates are a part of cheating because we should write every code yourself also bro i want to tell you to see my contest 1027 and now you can get free i dont cheat anymore
Hi, I am sorry and I don't want to sound like I am teaching you or something.
I am assuming that you are not dropping these comments for troll and you might be just unaware, I don't know.
But, please learn to understand the distinction between suspicious and non suspicious submissions.
The lines which you pointed out are said macros and they are used just to save time.
You are really not supposed to question someone why they are using this.
Also, many functions are reusable in multiple problems, like Sieve of Eratosthenes.
So, many people (including myself) use templates which has already multiple functions written on it and it really doesn't matter if they are used in that specific submission or not.
Its legal to do so. You can use your own templates for any of your personal use-case and choose to make any submission with/without using them.
And, talking about comments in code, I don't know what comments you are indicating, but I myself write comments for better mind mapping. It's just a personal decision if that helps me and it's also legal to write any comments that I wish to write.
And, please use "spoiler" feature before dropping large code snippets. It's really annoying to see such random codes when we scroll recent-actions.