leetcode-patterns VS Summer2022-Internships

Today, after updating my personal website, I shifted focus to a crucial aspect of tech interviews: data structures and algorithms. Starting with arrays, I've committed to tackling one topic per day, solving 3ish related LeetCode problems to reinforce my understanding. 📚 (This website is super useful - sorting leetcodes by patterns)

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Quality over quantity! I solved hundreds of them while preparing for big tech interviews and I can say with confidence after certain number of questions we have diminishing returns. A good base of questions with patterns clearly explained is all you really need. As of now there are many lists online Blind 75 (https://www.teamblind.com/post/New-Year-Gift---Curated-List-of-Top-75-LeetCode-Questions-to-Save-Your-Time-OaM1orEU), Prashad's leetcode patterns (https://seanprashad.com/leetcode-patterns/), curated list of problems from Elements of Programming.

Grinding leetcode is inefficient. What you should be doing is familiarizing yourself with the common patterns you might expect to see in an interview. Look at the blind 75 and https://seanprashad.com/leetcode-patterns/.

Initially, you don’t need to solve any of the problems from scratch. Look up the problem on YouTube and someone will walk you through it. This will build your intuition of when to reach for a heap or for a DP array or when to do BFS, etc. If you don’t know these, then watch another video explaining the concepts. These videos are often 10-15 minutes a day so with a 30 minute time commitment you potentially can get through 3 a day, getting you through the complete blind 75 (more than enough) in less than a month or 1 of each of SP’s 22 patterns in a couple of weeks.

The great thing is you don’t need dedicated time for this approach, you can often start a video while tackling laundry or doing some dishes.

Then, start putting these into practice but spend no more than 10-15 minutes on the problem. If you can’t solve it, go watch the video again. There are so many times where you can have the right approach but make a stupid mistake that will cause you to flounder and you can pick up a better way of doing it. Eventually you will be solving these in 10-15 minutes and the time commitment will have remained at a minimum.

After this, find a new job that is only 40 hours a week and voila you’ve just opened up 10-20 hours for personal projects.

I used this list of patterns for my preparation, but you can use another; it's just an example of what it usually looks like. 😊

Sean Prashad has a good list that maps the type of problem to a particular pattern.

Sean Prashad: 212+54 problems

When I started grinding I had already taken a DS course so I was at least aware of hashmaps, arrays, trees, etc. but even leetcode easies we’re still a struggle and the ones I could do I wasn’t solving them optimally. Having that basic knowledge though allowed me to start struggling through the book I mentioned. EPI is harder than CTCI but it’s language specific and I already knew I was going to use python. I completely skipped bit manipulation and tries but I ended up getting a trie question in one of my interviews and that was by far the hardest question I’ve ever gotten, probably because i skipped tries altogether lol. I haven’t tried grokking. I started doing EPI by hand so that I was forced to think through solutions before writing them but if you feel like that’s unnecessary for you just type it but it def helped me since in interviews you have to discuss before coding. The DP section of epi was really hard so I didn’t complete it. From there I just started struggling through LC. After epi I started with easies but i didn’t stay there for long since epi is mostly mediums and some hards anyways. The biggest thing is to learn from every problem, even the ones you don’t finish. Truly take the time to understand a solution even if that means 45+ minutes of digging into it. The same patterns come up again and again so you’ll have to dig into them eventually. Identifying the patterns from the way questions are phrased come from quantity I feel like so doing a lot of LC problems is the way to go. My pattern recognition was on point after about 100 problems in total maybe. For LC i did 95% of all easies and mediums in [this]. Earlier I said I skipped DP in epi but def do dp leetcode problems. You don’t have to master it but def become familiar. If by the end of everything you’re able to knock out 70+ medium level questions then you should probably be good for internship interviews. Hope this helps and also if you take the blind 75 route NeetCode on YouTube has done all of them I think and he’s really good with explaining the problems. Take the time to understand each data structure individually before even attempting problems. I think EPI does a good job of that or you can just hop on YouTube. Good luck Glum Choice, I have faith that you will prevail 🏅

LC refers to Leetcode problems (LC = LeetCode). While the Leetcode website itself is not the only place to practice, "Leetcode problems" refers to the general concept of programming interview problems involving data structures and algorithms.

I am also new at leetcode. But from the advices I gathered and from my own experience, I will suggest to first learn all data structures. Once you understand, then start with the easy ones and gradually learn the patterns. Sean Prashad as a good list of the pattern you can find via this link: https://seanprashad.com/leetcode-patterns/

Study leetcode and ds + algo outside of class as much as you can. I applied to 150, got like 25 OA/interview and got an internship as a sophomore it just takes a ton of work. I’d check out this link https://github.com/pittcsc/Summer2022-Internships Sorry I’m on mobile. They haven’t made one for 2023 yet, but when they do I would check up on it; it’s fairly easy to apply down that list.

It’s not really efficient, but it’s easier with a compiled list of options. I used https://github.com/pittcsc/Summer2022-Internships as a guide for 2022.

The link is for the list back in April 2021, so it is definitely expected that the list is small. The current one has 100+ if you're wondering https://github.com/pittcsc/Summer2022-Internships/tree/master

On GitHub you can find crowdsourced job applications like those found here https://github.com/pittcsc/Summer2022-Internships and here https://github.com/pittcsc/NewGrad-2021. These may be outdated, but you can do your own research to find repos that are up-to-date.

I used https://github.com/pittcsc/Summer2022-Internships to find my internship this summer. I assume another one of these will be made for 2023

I didn’t get my first offer until my junior year, but one thing that really helped me was to apply to a bunch of companies. I was over hundred companies deep when I got my first offer. This website by UPitt really helped me with my internship search last summer : https://github.com/pittcsc/Summer2022-Internships. Expect them to open up late July/early June. Besides this, I would brush up on behavioral interviews and Leetcode for software roles.

Internship, without a doubt. I'm in quant, and this list has been super helpful. My friends in biz/finance have said good things about this one as well. Apply to as many as you can!

First internship was frosh year, got in late May – found it on this github repo lol

Head up king(or queen)! I got my summer internship offer on May 22 – there is still time!! I'd recommend cleaning up your resume and applying to as many places as you can. Here's a list of tech internships and general internships. I'd recommend getting an application autofilling extension to save you some of the stress & tears! You got this!!!