I am currently in USACO Silver but considering my CF performance I will probably ICP to gold in one contest. According to multiple sources my CF rating corresponds to high gold or low platinum, but I still don't feel very confident in my USACO abilities.
This blog is directed towards people who are in USACO platinum or camping. If you are not in either then you can still comment if you have something useful to say. I'm willing to bet most people with a rating below 1600 don't have much useful to say.
I know these advice blogs are redundant but I could not find much about this. Most advice is about to start but there's nothing when you're far beyond starting.
So here are my questions:
- What did you do to practice? Currently I am doing USACO guide gold problems I feel like doing and will eventually start doing random actual USACO gold problems. Should I be doing something more focused? Should I try oj.uz?
- How to practice implementation? The only thing I could think of is putting some pressure on myself to implement faster. Did it just come naturally from experience?
- How do you keep yourself disciplined? I often struggle with this.
- Did you do anything outside of competitive programming that helped?
- Is there a significant difference in the problem solving part of CF and OI problems? I know OI problems require more implementation, but is there a different mindset/skillset when it comes to dealing with the problem?
- Do the roaches in the dorms taste good?
- Am I asking the wrong questions? Should I just shut up and do the 30 most recent 2000 problems?
Please don't comment "solve more problems and listen to twice" I promise I'm trying (except I don't listen to twice)
Auto comment: topic has been updated by sc3developer (previous revision, new revision, compare).
Bro I'm in the same exact same situation as you lmao. Thanks for making this blog
I'll offer my 2c for the following:
2 I just drilled 100x 1600 and 100x 1700 (I was about 1900 at the time). Keep in mind though this is what took my impl from "diabolically bad" to "okay", so going from "okay" to "good at it" might take more effort. (Also I was also trying to get more consistent at easy problems for CF which I am not sure if that is something that you want to do for USACO (refer to the theory of getting good at codeforces blog (yeah, the one you thought I was cheating in (also quad nested parens just for fun))))
3 Idk. I honestly just practice whenever I can and don't really care if I'm busy with coursework or going out with friends or whatever. I think you should try to make an effort to be more disciplined but if you end up hating on yourself too much it can flip the opposite way where now you have a negative mental association with practice.
4 Powerlifting
5 Maybe. I haven't noticed a huge difference personally yet though. Maybe also you can worry less about speed ("slow is mistake-free and mistake-free is fast")
6 Good macros
Thanks
And good sleep