My Indian OI Journey

The Beginning : 

It all started in the summer of 2017 when my eldest brother (Arun Kumar) returned from his college for summer vacation. I was in 8th grade. He used to do competitive programming back then and told me about it. He told me about IOI and ICPC and how prestigious these competitions were. I was learning QBASIC in school and decided to learn C++ around this time. I remember watching YouTube tutorials on C++, but I wouldn't really understand anything until my brother would teach me.  After a few weeks of learning basic syntax, I started doing problems on Hackerrank and then eventually CodeForces. My brother used to send me problems which I would try to do. That's how it worked for the initial one or two months after which I lost interest and stopped doing problems. I had no idea how people participated in IOI and hence had no motivation to continue... 

Indian Computing Olympiad (ICO) 2020 : 

Around the month of August in 2019, I discovered about ICO while browsing through CodeChef (which I had found out recently). Now, I knew how the selections were made for IOI in India. I also found out about people like Rajat De and Malvika Raj Joshi who became an inspiration in no time. 

ICO is structured as follows :

• Zonal Level : Zonal Informatics Olympiad (ZIO) / Zonal Computing Olympiad (ZCO)
• National Level : Indian National Olympiad in Informatics (INOI)
• Training Camp : International Olympiad in Informatics Training Camp (IOITC)  

ZIO/ZCO is held around the month of November, INOI in January and IOITC in May. 

I knew very basic stuff in C++ which was not enough for ZCO so I decided to prepare for ZIO in 2020. I was in 10th standard when I gave ZIO for the first time. I tried to solve all past problems of ZIO, which turned out to be very hard as these type of problems were new to me. But with the help and guidance of my brother, I pulled it off. I would ask for help on CodeChef Discuss for the problems I was not be able to solve. I also found a partner (Sudheera YS) who was preparing for ZIO that year. 

I scored around 45-50 out of 80 in ZIO 2020 and the cutoff for class X was 70 :( 
 

ICO 2021 : 

After my class X examinations were over, I decided to prepare for ICO seriously. My goal was to make it to the training camp. So, I started practicing on CodeChef and Codeforces. I started by doing the easiest problems on these platforms. After a month or so, I started giving contests on these websites. Shortly after, I found out about Atcoder and started participating in Atcoder Beginner Contests (this proved to be very helpful). Later, I got to know about USACO and started practicing here also. 

I was pretty much practicing from all the places I could. A mentoring program (UFDS) for ICO was started in around November 2020, which proved to be very helpful for my preparation of ICO. 

ZIO was around the corner. ZCO was cancelled this year due to COVID-19 :(

For ZIO, I again solved all past year problems and also discussed each problem with my friends to find other approaches with which a problem can be solved. 

I scored 50 out of 80 in ZIO 2021, and it was enough to qualify for INOI 2021 :)

There is around a 1-1.5 months gap b/w the zonal level and the national level. Unfortunately, class XI examinations were right before INOI . This was really unsettling, and I didn't know how to handle both. This was my schedule before the examinations : 

I used to get up at 4 am and code till 8 am (9 or 10 am on weekends), after which I used to attend my online classes. After which I used to study for the examinations. Like this, time passed by, and my examinations were over. INOI was around 3 days away. I was really stressed, but I also believed that this was my best shot at INOI. 

So, the format of INOI is like this : You are given 2 problems with subtasks and 3 hours to solve them. All subtasks in a problem add up to 100 points, so whole contest is of 200 points. I had solved all previous year ZCO and INOI problems at least twice. 

I screwed up in INOI  2021. I spent all my time on first problem, which I was not able to AC till the end. I had 70 points in the first 15 mins of the contest and I had 70 points after the end of the contest. All this time, I was just trying to convert my 70 points to 100 points on the first problem instead of actually trying to solve the second problem, which was a really stupid thing. By the time I opened the 2nd problem, around 1 hour was left, and it was enough to panic me.I couldn't stop thinking about the first problem. As a result of which, I was just not able to understand the second problem. 

The cutoff for training camp for all classes that year was 100 :(

This was really sad. 

This was my first onsite event and I learned that doing contests online at home, is a lot different from onsite contests. I also knew that I had to practice how to distribute my time and brain to different problems.

ICO 2022 :

This was my last shot at ICO and the toughest one yet. I was in class XII and the cutoff to qualify for IOITC in class XII is usually very high. To toughen things up, the whole structure of INOI was revised this year. New things were added in INOI syllabus. 

The changes made this year in brief : 

• INOI will now have three problems instead of two. The duration of the exam continues to be 3 hours.
• Medal system is introduced in INOI this year. Approximately 10 students will receive Gold, 20 students will receive Silver, and 30 students will receive Bronze. 
• Each problem will have more subtasks.
• Following topics have been added in INOI syllabus : 
• Segment Trees
• Union Find Disjoint Set (UFDS)
• Minimum Spanning Trees (MST) 
• Square Root Techniques

These changes were very scary. But after some time, I realised that these changes are for everyone and everyone will be affected. 

This year I solved a lot of OI type problems from different judges. I continued to take part in contests regularly. I also focused on learning new topics this year. Also, this year CBSE Board examinations took place in 2 terms. So, I devoted less time to CP than last year. 

ZIO and ZCO were both held in December and both of them took place in between my board examinations.  I did not qualify through ZIO this year due to some silly mistakes but managed to qualify for INOI from ZCO comfortably. 

After my board examinations, I gave all my time to preparing for INOI. From the prior experience at INOI, I had realised that strategy is as important as skill (if not more). So, I tested different strategies in MOCK INOI's organized by the ICO mentoring program (UFDS). The problem setters of INOI made it very clear that subtasks are very important if you want to do well in INOI. So, I trained myself to focus more on subtasks. 

INOI was held in February 2022. My strategy was simple. In the first hour, I would take the easy subtasks from all the three problems, and then I would spend time on the harder subtasks. The only problem with this strategy was that I was coding every single subtask and it took a lot of time. But ok. 

I had a score of 126/300 at the end of contest. I already lost all hopes for IOITC qualification. 

Results came around in a week or so. 

I qualified for silver medal but did not qualify for IOITC. I cannot describe how sad it was.

But anyways, this was the end of my OI journey and I am very proud of it. 

Fortunately, I received an admission offer from Chennai Mathematical Institute and a direct interview at IIIT-H.

I would like to thank everyone who supported me and helped me throughout this journey.

If you have any questions, please feel free to comment here or DM me.

Thank You!