If you are reading this ... you are in the 10% audience who is actually serious, as most don't even care to move beyond the intermediate stage. In the Last blog.

In the last blog we read about LEVEL 1 and LEVEL 2, where you are essentially learning the topics required. After that, the game becomes of collecting techniques that can give you edge in a competition.

LEVEL 3 : Become Competitive

No matter how much DSA you learn, or how many Sheet questions you solve, you will not be able to perform in OAs, Contests and Interviews... and this is what most don't understand.

Solving a problem in standard practice has 4 problems :

• You are watching Tutorial videos - 

• You are seeing the code in the Video as well

• Leetcode tells you the  - 

• There is no progression in the problems - 

What ends up happening is that you are spending a ton of hours with little to no progress.

To improve beyond ... you need to throw yourself in contests and learn important CFFTDs

C - Concepts in different topics, from first principles.

F - Frameworks, on how to right reasoning.

F - Forms in every topics that are common.

T - Tactics to optimize complexities in different topics (like prefix sum, convex hull etc. in DP)

D - Debugging techniques when you are not getting the desired output in particular scenarios.

Read this blog : 

https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/119013

Well, Vivek how can do this?

First thing that i will suggest is to actually start watching harder video tutorials or reading blogs on YT and CF.

Once you start reading hard stuff, your brain automatically starts getting you started on the growth part. You will be able to understand multi-step reasoning, which is generally not required in easy problems. The more you go into first priciples and understand each topic, you will understand what were you missing. One such playlist that i have created and is pretty common is the DP workshop i took on YT. The moment you complete it, the world for the topic DP changes for you.

You will get an idea on what CFFTD truely means (atleast a gist of it).

Second, you need to know a lot of techniques. First time you encounter a new technique, read more about it from USACO guide or CP-algorithm and practice 10 or so problem (till the time you feel a little confident).

For example, 

if you don't know that GCD(F_n, F_m) = F _gcd(n,m). , You can never solve a problem that requires it.

To practice and grow, the resources that i will recommend is 

First, CSES ... Hand's down teaches you the most amount of techniques in the least time.

Second, Do rating wise practice on topics you want to improve on Codeforces.

Your rating -100, to rating + 300 (400 if you want more challenge) is the sweet spot for any topic. Give contests and see which topic you struggled on (Constructive ?? , Graph?? ) enable that filter and grind 20 questions before the next contest. One of the BEST ways to grow.

What you should be able to do by the end of this phase is wot be able to solve Atcoder Beginner contest's D and E and be able to solve Leetcode Weekly first 3 Problem consistently.

You can now participate on the Div2s and Div3s of CF as well. Note that CF is a little mature community so i don't recommend any beginner to start there.

If you are able to reach here .... I think you are already i the top 1% of the crowd and you can get most of the job bar for DSA cleared. If you want to move any more ahead... its purely for CP purposes... But some of you want to ... so will ensure to give my tips for competitions on CP (like ICPC) and how to max out on that in another Blog.

Quick summary as per AI:

I hope you liked this blog. Feel free to drop what you have found useful in the comments below.

Cya.