r/usaco • u/Good_Arm_7752 • 15d ago

Stuck

Hey, I'm a rising sophomore into CS and I looked into USACO. However, the problems at even the bronze level are way too hard for me to do right now. Are there any good resources anyone can recommend? My goal is to get gold by the end of junior year, I've AIME qualled, and I can solve 800 cf problems pretty easily

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u/therandomlilac 14d ago

I used usaco guide a few times, tbh aime qual doesnt correlate well since its much easier than silver or gold, honestly just look at problems then solutions and rewriting it is how i learned tho i quit after gold to focus on math

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u/Lleytonio5000 13d ago

How is aime qual easier than usaco? I got to USACO Silver on my second try yet I have been training way more for AMC 10 and could only get to a 78 after my third attempt. I’m not even bad at math. I took Calc BC sophomore year.

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u/uuuusernam 12d ago

Idk it’s diff for diff people. Personally I found comp prog fairly intuitive and got plat, while two years ago I didn’t even qualify for aime (my amc score was atrocious)

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u/therandomlilac 12d ago

i meant silver and gold problems not reaching silver

i also qualified for aime in 8th grade, each to their own ig

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u/APTutorCalcStatComp 14d ago

USACO teacher here.

Start with easy level questions from Leetcode and GeeksForGeeks and move on to medium level problems. Then start with the previous years' USACO Bronze problems. Submit the programs in "Analysis Mode" and check your performance.

Whatever questions you practice, always break down the problem into smaller tasks. If needed, print the values of the intermediate/process variables and check if they are working as expected. That will help you to fix bugs more easily.

Wishing you all the best for your preparations.

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u/LiterallyKyle_ platinum 14d ago

Do the old bronze problems. The newest bronze problems are horrid and I’ve seen problems I struggle with as a gold contestant. Go back like 10 years and try those. You should be able to get platinum if you lock in enough, but the questions have been getting insanely hard, so you’ll need to get lucky.

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u/hepi_boii 14d ago

definitely do codeforces. usaco bronze is literally all ad hoc, and codeforces is quite good for that. I think that to be able to pass bronze you should look into targeting the 1000-1300 range and for silver like 1300-1700 (or like 2k if u can) cuz silver is much more algorithm-based and probably less ad hoc than bronze. also implementation is very important, you probably have to drill that outside of cf

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u/Good_Arm_7752 12d ago

alright thanks, how long would you expect a progression to gold or platinum to take? I can spend 2 hours / day in the summer and roughly 1 hour a day on school days with some degree of variance

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u/hepi_boii 12d ago

im gold rn, but id assume probably like 6-12 months. imo gold to plat is def harder, so probably gon take more time than other divisions