jahin_ahnaf's blog

Finally reached Pupil — keep going if you’re still stuck!
By jahin_ahnaf, history, 5 months ago, In English

After participating in 45 contests, with ups and downs in rating and piercing pressure from parents, exams, and academic life, I have finally freed myself from Newbie and reached Pupil after yesterday's contest.

I started learning programming almost 5 years ago, but I didn’t know about Codeforces. Thanks to necro_mancer for introducing me to it. It has been a great experience, but I think the journey has just started. Pupil, the green color, is actually nothing. What really matters is what I have learned and how I will apply it in the future. Indeed, the more you learn, the more you begin to realize how little you know.

However, there were many days when I started hating CP, but this didn’t last long because I believed in myself. I could have reached Pupil earlier, but what I lacked was consistency and a steady solving streak. Then, I started learning more and practicing on different sites. Thanks to pllk for his GOATED CSES Problem Set and the CP Handbook.

I wrote this for those who are still stuck in Newbie and not seeing growth. I just want to say to them: Don’t Lose Hope! I had almost given up on CP when I failed to reach the National Round of the Informatics Olympiad in my country. But Alhamdulillah, I reached Nationals this year. It has increased my confidence and passion more than ever, and I believe that in the coming years, I will be able to achieve my goal of representing my country on the world stage. And also, Soumya1, your gold winning in IOI inspired me a lot.

Finally, I would like to thank MikeMirzayanov for this amazing platform.

That’s all. Thanks for your time if you read it all.

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5 months ago, hide # |
 
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baby calm down

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5 months ago, hide # |
 
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I've just reached pupil after Educational Codeforces Round 188 (Rated for Div. 2), and then dropped back to 1199 in Codeforces Round 1087 (Div. 2)

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congrats!

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I got over a 100 contests, got close to pupil in March of 2025 where I fumbled a problem whose solution I figured but just forgot to handle the n = 1 test case, never got anywhere close to that (1200) ever since lol, I should've solved that problem on that fateful day. Congrats on reaching pupil in 45 contests man! Any tips/advice on getting there? Advice in the sense that was there any special strat/resources you used that worked out for you or is it just the same old solve problems till you break through strategy?

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    5 months ago, hide # ^ |
     
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    Thanks. I have no particular tips/advice actually, but I think, and almost everyone would say- Practice, and practice. Btw, sometimes luck matters too haha. But yeah, increase difficulty of problems you solve slowly and don't spend hours on a single problem. Better read hints, or maybe the whole editorial.

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    5 months ago, hide # ^ |
     
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    solve problems around your rating that you don't know how to solve and don't ignore them, and also check better solutions and implement the best solution with the best implementation, so you can learn new stuff.

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      5 months ago, hide # ^ |
       
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      Nice pfp btw. And yeah, I've solved a few problems in every rating tier b/w 800-2000, although higher rated solves are relatively sparse, but I'm yet to see much improvement(if any at all). I'll try increasing the volume, spamming div 2 C and D problems from past 50 contests and see where it gets me.

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        5 months ago, hide # ^ |
         
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        solve the newest 50-100 problems in every rate starting from 1200 for example, give yourself 30 minutes of thinking on each problem, if you didn't get any ideas look for hints or just open the solution , and check best codes and ideas from higher rating people, this method worked for me really good.

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5 months ago, hide # |
 
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Good to see the success of another fighter. Keep it up!

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Congratulations, bro! Soumya1's gold winning also inspired me to start CP, and that's actually the first time I came to know that something exists named the Informatics Olympiad.

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very nice, your graph is beautiful.

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congrats!

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Well done getting to pupil. For me it is always inspiring seeing another codeforcer grinding away for many contests and slowly getting better.

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Congrats

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MashaAllah . Keep it up and set goal to reach specialist this year. Will do it together InsAllah.

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Congrats! Brother i am also trying my best to reach Pupil, ur Post Motivated me!

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congratulations man

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All the best man...keep achieving

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Rise up again broo you can do it again stay confident and hard!

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Some unsolicited advice comming up: Solve more difficult problems.

You can use tools like CF Analytics to look at the distribution of problems you solved. Solving 800 — 1000 problems won't help you improve, out of all the problems you have solved so far about 70% of them are in this difficulty range.

For (a bad) comparison that number is about 21% for me.

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