After solving 500+ problems on Codeforces and 1000+ across all platforms, I’ve finally reached Pupil. It took me 37 contests to achieve this milestone.
To be honest, I’ve often seen people reach this milestone much faster. sometimes after solving just a handful of problems. That used to push me into self-doubt: Am I learning CP the wrong way? Is my practice approach flawed?
But I’ve realized that everyone’s journey is different. For me, consistency and patience mattered more than speed.
Now, I’m planning to take a short break from contests to strengthen my fundamentals and learn some new concepts that will hopefully help me climb to Specialist.
If you’ve been through this stage, I’d love to hear your guidance or tips on how to prepare better for the next step.
to me, it looks like you need to solve more problems in the specialist rating range. from what i’ve seen, problems in that range are either very ad-hoc (usually div2b) or very standard (usually div2c), so doing a bit of both will help. most importantly, if you don’t have a real need to increase your rating (e.g. university team selection or something similar), i suggest you train on problems you like thinking about and enjoy the process.
anyways, i hope you manage to reach your goal and have fun. have a nice day!
Hey , can you suggest me someway to improve at div 2 — problem D.
The problems don't seem intuitive at all, Even after the editorial : It feels disconnected. Like I just can not come up with these ideas during contests.
I am not sure if i am doing it wrong , but a single D problem is taking 2 hours + to complete.
i wish i could tell you the secret formula but honestly i'm not very good with div2d yet. sometimes i get them, sometimes i don't (actually, out of the last 5 div2 i solved d only once).
idk if this could help but i noticed this: when i solve problem i generate observations and ideas in certain directions, then i decide if i should investigate more towards that direction.
when i don't manage to solve a problem that is hard (but doable) for me, it's often because i prematurely picked a direction, even if not really convincing, as it felt more reassuring than just wondering.
when i do manage to solve a problem that is hard (but doable) for me, as soon as i come up with the right direction (the one that leads to the solution) i'm usually pretty confident that it is a good one.
trust your gut and don't settle for a mid direction. become very comfortable with not knowing the solution for most the problem solving time (easy to say, not so much to do).
this is more like general advice for hard-but-doable problems. Instead, for hard problems that you are not capable of solving right now (for you it would be div2d), just solve more hard-but-doable ones until your level rises enough and they move in the doable category.
also, i'm pretty sure not being able to do div2d is very common at your current rating so don't worry.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I’ll definitely think about this more seriously - “I suggest you train on problems you like thinking about and enjoy the process.” Have a nice day!
It should not take that long to get pupil. I recommend you to watch Shayan's video about strategy. I think its title was "How to become expert in 3 months" or smth like that.
Thanks for your recommendation! Looking at your account made me curious — how did you manage to reach Expert in just 2 months, given that you’ve solved only 128 problems? Could you please share more about how you train, which problem sets you solve, and the resources you follow?
This is not my first account. I've reached expert with solving 300 problems in 9 months.
I see you're solving a lot of 800 problems
All that you need to do: Solve 30-50 problems from range 1200-1400 (worked for me even 1200-1300)
Topics needed:
Binary Search
Two pointers (look in the EDU page on CF, but change site language to russian to see hidden topics)
Sliding Window (other two pointers)
Counting sort
Prefix\Suffix sums
Number Theory stuff like gcd,lcm and their properties like gcd of a sequence: gcd(a1, a2, ..., an)
And just solve many problems to obtain experience, patterns to recognise them in contests quickly
And yes, you need to forget about solving 800-1100 problems, or you will be stuck on 1200 and not moving on. If you solve a problem and feel comfortable, then you're doing something wrong
I think you’re right. Solving tons of problems in the 800–1100 range has made me used to the idea that every problem should be solved within 20–30 minutes. That might be the reason I’m still not confident about Div. 2 C, since it took me over an hour to solve it. From now on, I’ll focus on problems in the 1300–1500 range. Thanks a lot for your topic suggestions and advice. Wishing you a great day!
Div.2C in a hour it's a great result! Because most of Div.2C's are 1400-1500 And when you able to solve 1400-1500 on contests in 20-30 minutes you can reach expert easily
Could you please give me some sugestion that how can reach pupil. What i need to do now?
May be I am not a good fit to answer your question, But after spending a lot of time on CF I knew something which helped me to grow to x rating, i.e practice problems of rating x+200 or x+300 atleast 2-3 or even more in a single day you can see your growth quickly. And if you took more time in solving those questions that's not an issue, cuz you are thinking better and lot(improving your thinking) but never stop thinking of solution to the problem.
Last advice to reach specalist try more more expert rated problems which will help you to become a stable specalist
Ig with this I am clear!
x+200 or x+300 is true