Hey guys,
Is it just me, or has getting a positive rating change become brutally hard lately? Ever since using AI tools and mass cheating became a regular thing in Div 2 and Div 3, it feels like the whole meta has shifted. All the old blogs saying "just solve A and B to get Pupil" feel completely outdated now. I want to know from people who actually achieved 1100, Pupil, or Specialist recently—what does the realistic baseline is currently. Please don't give advice from 2 or 3 years ago, because the platform felt completely different back then. If you’ve made the jump to these ranks recently, please drop your stats below: How many problems did you solve, and roughly at what minute mark were your submissions?
Thanks, and good luck in the next round!
I think you should stop with div 2 for a while. And observe 1200-1300 patterns. Practice Implementation, Math, Greedy, Sorting, and Searching. Space contests around 7-14 days, with dedicated practice between them. I think 1200 should happen rather quickly. You can try CSES problem set too to learn more patterns. And don't bother too much about others (cheaters included) because you can't influence their results. Until codeforces systems get better equipped with cheating, we can kinda tolerate a harsher rating. In my opinion, CP isn't as dead as the blogs make it seem, especially for coders rated below 1800. Try exclusively solving div 3 (maybe even div 4).
Pupil and specialist are still easy
For div2 pupil, fast AB if C is hard or ABC if C is easy works
For div2 specialist, ABC if D is hard or ABCD if D is easy works
Div3 has a lot more variance in difficulty, but on average A-D is pupil and A-E is specialist
Problem solved count doesn't matter at all it's the quality of your solves
Other than that #1 advice is don't listen to newbies for advice
The old advice isn't completely outdated, just use the old "advice to hit expert" and hope that you become specialist lol