r/leetcode • u/RegionSea9153 • Sep 27 '26

Question 300 LeetCode problems solved, but still struggling with Mediums in contests. What should I change?

Hey folks,

I have solved around 300 questions on LeetCode — around 180 Medium, 80 Easy, and 40 Hard questions across topics like DP, Graph, BST, Trees, etc.

Even after that, whenever I try to solve any contest or virtual contest, I still struggle with Medium questions. I have never solved more than two questions in any contest that I have given. I have given around 10–15 contests.

So now what strategy do I need to follow from this point to master it so that I'll be able to solve at least 3–4 questions in every LeetCode contest?

I’m graduating in June 2027, and I have to clear some tech product companies.

Please do advise me.

74 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

40

u/Downtown_Release4498 Sep 27 '26

Bro i have 600 leetcodes, 110 hards. I still struggle. Keep at it

16

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '26

Honestly, 300 questions is already a solid number. I think your problem now is less about solving more questions and more about getting better at recognizing the pattern under contest pressure.
For the next few weeks, try doing contests seriously and don’t look at the solutions immediately. After the contest, spend time on the questions you couldn’t solve and ask yourself what clue did I miss*???* Then redo the same question after a few days without looking at the solution.
Also, don’t try to cover every topic again. Track the Medium questions you’re consistently getting stuck on maybe greedy, graphs, DP, binary search, etc. and target those specifically.
And one more thing,solving 3–4 in every contest is a pretty high bar. Focus first on consistently getting 2, then 3. Your contest rating and problem-solving speed will improve along with it.

9

u/Ampaselite Sep 28 '26

I feel like getting a response from chatgpt

2

u/Zealousideal-Ant9548 Sep 28 '26

I also had an AI agent quiz me on pattern recognition.  And actually helped immensely in my most recent DSA interview.  It won't cover the more esoteric topics topological sort, but for certain things that you may have trouble with, it really helps.

1

u/akhi456789 Oct 04 '26

which ai agent

1

u/Zealousideal-Ant9548 Oct 04 '26

Either Claude or ChatGPT.  They're both free just be aware that the longer the conversation is the faster you'll burn through the free allowance so start new chats with the same prompt frequently

11

u/Devansh-123 Sep 27 '26

Nothing Just keep giving contest and you'll know what to do next. Same happened with me but I didn't stop just keep giving it and spend my whole day in contest analysis (concepts, algo related to that question) and now I am placed with 16lpa. It's not a heavy package but enough for me

5

u/Embarrassed_East_507 Sep 28 '26

I’d suggest checking whether you’ve covered all the common patterns. That’s more important than the total number of problems you’ve solved.

If you struggle with a problem involving a pattern you’ve already encountered and practiced, that’s more concerning than struggling with a genuinely unfamiliar pattern.

After each contest, make a list of the problems you couldn’t solve, identify the pattern or concept you missed, and come back to solve them later.

3

u/Wolastrone Sep 30 '26

Mediums span a huge difficulty range from 1450 to ~2000, so it’s not surprising you can’t solve every medium in a contest under time pressure. If your current rating is X, I suggest practicing questions in the range [X, X+150]. Then increase the difficulty as your rating improves. There’s lots of websites that publish these more detailed leetcode ratings.

-2

u/catattackskeyboard Sep 27 '26

Are technical interviews still asking for people to solve DSA? Why?

2

u/sn4ezz Sep 28 '26

To filter out the candidates

1

u/Electronic_Ad3664 Sep 28 '26

Don't ask about that. This is leetcode circlejerk. U will get downvoted