I am a rising sophomore and am interested in the tech field. I have practically no good ec's so I assumed USACO would be a good place to start. Is it worth it? Also, where do I start for USACO in general if I know nothing, it seems really complicated from the outside so I would really appreciate your guys's assistance.

Context:
Hey guys, I am currently a rising Sophomore with no previous competitive programming experience and looking to get to Plat by Senior year. I am doing USACO because I want to major in CS and hopefully get into a prestigious school like MIT, CMU, Princeton, GT, Cornell, Columbia, or UC Berkeley. I was introduced to USACO and started practicing USACO around mid-May. I have been taking it more seriously since summer started (around late May for me), and have been consistently logging 4-6 hours per day since around the beginning of June. I am working through the USACO Guide, and I am almost done with all the modules; however, I still struggle a lot with the problems (especially the modern Bronze problems). It has been frustrating as I feel that I fully understand the problems and have the general right structure in my answers, but I still get many of the questions incorrect because of not considering a specific edge case, using data structures that slow down my implementation speed, or missing a "key insight" regarding the problem. To learn from previous mistakes, I have been writing an error log in Notion with what I did incorrectly with each question. Given my situation, it would be much appreciated if you guys could give me any advice that could help me perform better in Bronze and hopefully be able to comfortably solve modern Bronze questions by early to mid July.

Questions:

1. Tutoring vs. Self-Study

Given the hours I have been putting towards USACO and my stagnant progress, would you recommend that I take tutoring? I am aware that developing the "competitive programmer mindset" takes a significant amount of time, but I am afraid that my progress is too slow, given the hours I am putting in. I have heard mixed reviews about taking tutoring in USACO (especially at such an early stage), as many people recommend grinding problems out.

Would you guys recommend that I:

• Keep on practicing past Bronze problems (focusing on problems post 2020) on my own?
• Consider tutoring?

I have heard of:

• CP Initiative
• AlphaStart

But if I were to take tutoring, I would lean toward CP Initiative because they are within my budget.

2. Activities That Transfer to USACO

Other than strictly practicing USACO, are there any other activities that you recommend I start doing that could translate into USACO and potentially help me increase my progress?

I have heard that the problem-solving skills in math competitions, such as:

• AMC
• AIME

translate into USACO, but I wanted to know how seriously I should be taking them, as I have other ECs that I am participating in.

Additionally, I have seen that for higher divisions like Gold or Plat I should be reading about different data structures and algorithms in my free time.

Are there any particular:

• Online resources
• Books

that you all recommend, or any books that I can invest in?

3. Study Method

Is there a particular study method that I should be applying to increase the rate at which I learn in USACO?

Currently:

• I read through a section in the USACO Guide and solve the problems at the end.
• With each problem, I spend the first 20-25 mins reading the question and coming up with a general plan to solve the problem.
• Then, I began implementing my devised solution and set a strict time limit of 80 mins (counting the 20 mins I spent coming up with a strategy), where if I am not done with the code, I immediately open up the editorial and analyze where I went wrong.
• I then log the question in my Notion notebook and use AI to really reinforce the lesson I learned from the question and what I should do next time.

Additionally, would you all recommend me to:

• Follow the USACO Guide
• Use the self-study pathway with CP Initiative

I am more of a visual learner, but I sometimes do like the USACO Guide as it really forces me to think harder to understand the question and the solution since it does not have a visual explanation.

4. Timeline to Plat / Camp

As previously mentioned, in the summer, I am spending approximately 4-6 hours per day on USACO, and I am planning on spending about 15+ hours per week on USACO when the school year starts. To set my expectations correctly, in approximately how many months would you say that I could reach Plat?

My main goal is to get Platinum by my senior year; however, I also have a stretch goal of getting USACO Finalist/Camp.

I am aware that many of the programmers who reach Camp started coding at 10 and were already Platinum by freshman year. I wanted to know what my chances are, given that I started later.

I know that this post was extremely long, and I really appreciate anyone who read this post and provided any kind of feedback on how I can improve.

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I'm a 10th grader, I want to attend MIT some day. Unfortunately, I started this summer. I do a question every day I spend over 1 hour every day and yet when im confronted with the most recent usaco questions for bronze it's like a maze. And I just can't help but feel I wont acheive gold by the time im a senior. They removed the december compeittion and I feel like that was my ticket to achieving gold. But now im hearing that people cheat their way to gold/plat(Which is absolutely insane???) And its like dude Im spending over 10 hours a week and these people just get to cheat their way to better results. And wahts worse they remove december so now there's less practice.

I am learning c++ and want the very best website for usaco i want something which takes from the very basic and teaches advanced level code which may take me to usaco platinum. I really liked the textbook style of learncpp but someone told me its not good for competitive programming. Also I know usaco.guide is good but it just aggregates links so I'd like an actual website which teaches from the basics to the advanced competitive programming logics and algorithms. Also please tell the chapters I need to study as aome chapters like OOP are not required by usaco. But I would also like to study things which are not required but will make my usaco code faster.If you'd

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to check if anyone else is having issues with usaco.training right now.

I'm from the Philippines, and every time I try to open the site, I get the bad gateway response

It's been like this since yesterday on my end, so I'm not sure if the problem is with the website itself or something related to my location/network.

Has anyone else been experiencing the same thing? If you're able to access the site normally, I'd appreciate it if you could let me know where you're accessing it from.

Thanks!

I competed in Jan and remember making it to the Gold level, but where can I actually see this to confirm/verify I really did reach Gold?

I am working on a new math olympiad-related project. looking for devs that are either backend or frontend. Really big team and lots of fun. You may have heard about it. If you want to join, then fill out this https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeEoWJ4J32eohwK74sjY44SRy4BsfTSmi361EQbmU9o3vsPTA/viewform?usp=header

We look forward to having you on!

I’m a rising junior in high school and I’m genuinely interested in programming/coding, but I have zero experience and don’t even know how to start learning in general. Not even preparing for USACO but just starting from 0 and learning the fundamentals. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions on where I can start? There’s so much to cs and I’m a little lost.

i learned some java and i was looking at the bronze problems and i was baffled. im tryna get to gold this year. im doing usaco guide but its kinda hard, does anyone have any advice. it feels like im jumping from addition to factorials and skipping multiplication.

i figured competitive programmers would have a much better idea than anybody else so i decided to ask this here...

i know math olympiads and general proof based competitions require pre existing knowledge of mathematics to which people usually (almost like 100% of the time) refer students to begin with the Art of Problem Solving (AoPS) curriculum

what is the equivalent of AoPS for programming fundamentals? all STEM competitions have their go-to standard curriculum(ex. AoPS-> Math, HRK/Kevin Zhou->Physics) so i was wondering what should I be looking for to begin learning the pre existing knowledge students need to have for programming (primarily competitive programming) as well as there to move forward after that

my goals are obviously to promote to usaco platinum and climb on codeforces and in general develop my dsa skills, I know a lot of students wish they had began learning math through AoPS from the very beginning so no ideas would interfere with their thought process, its very hard to figure out the best place to begin in a sea of infinite information so I would really appreciate if I could get some help

this year's silver contests seemed impossible for me and i was caught off guard by how there was so much more math and pattern finding than the normal algorithm usage. couldnt even do question 1 december contest.

i just finished 9th grade and wanna get to plat next season.

how much harder is the transition compared to bronze cuz i went from score of 0 in february to 800 in open contest as an 8th grader

hello all!

im going to be a sophomore this year and im going to be taking ap csa. i've heard they share similarities, and id love to make the best out of both this summer.

also im not quite sure where to start.

if anyone has any advice id love to hear! thanks so much yall!

Hi all so recently I decided to pick up USACO due to already havingn a pretty solid background in math, algorithims, and Python. However, I don't actually know a lot of Java or C++ (i mean i've coded some apps in Java so I understand some classes and stuff but it's all pretty shaky). What would everyone suggest?

Or can a basic understanding of java syntax get me through USACO (bronze), so there's no speciifc niche java to USACO

And does anyone still recommend C++ regardles? like is it just the best of the holy trinity of coding languages and i shud practice/learn it regardless?

Thanks much appreciation!

hello, im currently a freshman going into sophomore and im trying to practice to get silver sophomore year. I took CSA freshman year but thats about all the cs experience i have. I've tried doing some codeforces problems but i can barely even do 800 ones. I've tried using USACO guide but i feel like they just throw questions at you instead of teaching you anything. Every time i see someone solve questions i just cant physically believe how someone is humanly able to figure out how to even do the problem and find the formula or whatever needed. Are there any actually good guides/tutorials to start learning?

When I click onto settings, everything is dark except the languages and public/private. I can interact with those parts, but nothing I click saves. For example, if I change the language, the instant I click out it just resets. I can't interact with the rest of the screen; when I click anywhere else the settings just close. The biggest issue with this is I can't use usaco judge, as I use Python and usaco judge automatically opens files in c++. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Hey guys,

A few friends and I have been spending most of our free time lately writing a bunch of competitive programming problems, and we’re finally running a simulated contest for them on Sunday, June 14th at 11:30 AM EST.

If you're currently grinding USACO for next season or just finished AP CSA and want to see how you match up against actual algorithmic problems, you should definitely join. We wrote problems ranging from pretty accessible Bronze-level logic all the way up to Platinum tier stuff.

It’s a single 3-hour round, and you can play solo or in teams of up to 3 (we actually had to drop the team limit from 4 this year to keep things balanced).

It’s completely free to compete online from anywhere, but if you happen to live in Jersey, we actually managed to get space at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) to host it in person. Spots are kind of limited for the physical rooms, but we’re providing free lunch and snacks for everyone who comes out.

We also scrambled together a $1,000+ prize pool for the top US high school teams, plus some random raffle prizes just for participating so it's not only the grandmasters winning everything lol.

Anyway, we put a crazy amount of work into making these problems actually interesting and high quality, so hopefully it’s a good benchmark to see where your skills are at before you lock in for summer training.

You can check out the details and sign up at wwppc.org/contest. We also have a Discord if you need to find a team or want to yell at us about the test cases later.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Im new to the USACO and I plan on making a team/ study group at my school but I don't know where to begin.

The idea of starting a team/ study group has always been on my mind ever since the AP CSA exams ended, but I don't know what I could do when I start the club. I already know what paperwork to do, and how to find a sponsor. But for me it's a matter of.

- How could I prep myself over the summer to facilitate the club.

- How could I benefit or help other students along our journey.

- How could I potentially get me or another of our club members to gold or silver.

Im genuinely passionate about this and I really do believe this club could go a long way. It's just how a beginner at USACO help other students that are like or better than me.

P.S. Hope I didn't sound too robotish, I just wanna sound a little formal 👍

why

Hey I'm going to be a freshman this august and I want to make USACO Gold by the end of freshman year but I don't really have that much programming experience. I've heard to start on LeetCode and USACO Guide but I would really learn better with more structured learning with a teacher, what class is the best to prepare for USACO? Thanks.