CSES Repo Link (click me!)
Date: ~2019 to Present
My Competitive Programming (CP) journey has been quite rocky, but I
am more motivated now than ever to improve and see how far I can go. So far,
my biggest accomplishment has been a USA Computing Olympiad (USACO) Bronze pass in
January of 2023. Over the summer I worked on a variety Codeforces problems and USACO Guide,
as well as some more common problems in CSES (repo above).
Some of my future goals are a USACO Silver pass and a rating of 1800-2k+ on Codeforces.
As of writing this on 9/25/23, I have gotten past validation for 4/5 problems in the
Practice Round of the Meta Hacker Cup! This year I'm shooting for a tshirt, which they gave to
the top 2000 contestants last year. Here's where I am at right now on the above:
1/28/24 Update
I did make it to round 2 of the Meta Hacker Cup but sadly I placed outside the top 2000 at around
3000 (out of 6000 people). I was very close to getting the problem I needed to get there. I hope to get
well within next year! I participated in the ICPC NAQ yesterday, and I went 5/12, solving one more shortly
after the contest was over. I hit my target, but I know there's a lot more to be done. Finally, I
attempted the January USACO Silver Contest today. I had a good idea of what each problem was asking for as
well as possible approaches but ultimately couldn't make significant progress within the timeframe.
I'm tired at the moment, so I'll try to solve them after the contest is over.
2/24/24 Update
I won a bronze medal in the ICPC Mid-Atlantic Regional Contest!!! Words cannot describe how happy
I am right now. My team worked absolutely perfectly, covering for each others' weaknesses.
I am very happy to have solved problems I and J, which were implementation and interactive respectively.
I got close to solving problem B, which was dynamic programming on a tree. I had only
30 minutes left but was almost able to implement it. The other problems had to do with bits, trees, and
geometry. I hope to improve at these areas!
10/23/24 Update
I've been busy this past summer and now, and I only did some problems in June/July. Nevertheless, I've
started again, and recently did rounds 1-2 of the Meta Hacker Cup. I barely scraped by round 1, and I
unfortunately placed just outside of the top 2000 in round 2, missing out on the t-shirt. There is a
small chance that 12 people ahead of me get eliminated by the plagiarism checker but at this point I'm
still proud of what I've done. I was able to get the solution to A1 quickly and implemented a clean brute
force for B, even if it wasn't correct. Also, I was eventually able to get to the solution for A2. I
implemented the difficult part (the recursion) correctly and only messed up on my brute force helper. I know
that even two months ago I'd be too scared or unable to even attempt the recursion. Well,
I'll be back next year and who knows, maybe I'll even make round 3 (!?). To do that, there is some material
and contests I will do. For material, school problems, leetcode, usaco guide, comp-prog 4, and cses. For
contests, there's usaco, leetcode, and codeforces.
11/2/24 Update
After the plagiarism checks, I am now rank 1969!!! T-shirt acquired :D I can't believe it.
2/13/25 Update
1900 LeetCode contest rating! I would say the most improtant concept I've learned throughout the past few months
is dynamic programming. Turns out it was the LeetCode Premium Dyanmic Programming module that was finally able to
teach me how it works. I appreciate the categories of optimization vs counting dp, common patterns, etc. I've found
that I'm able to approach most easy-medium dp question and even put a good effort on some hard ones. Doing the weekly
contests also makes me more prepared for some of these online assessments. It's really satisfying to finally learn the
one concept from the beginning that I've had trouble on, as well as to be able to solve problems I wasn't able to before.
4/3/25 Update
2000 LeetCode contest rating! I'm encountering a lot of new ideas that will take some time to get used to. For now, my
next rating goal on this site is 2150, which is where I think the guardian badge lies. I'd also love to get my first
4/4 contest.
