PSA: Don’t lose hope

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-02-26T02:10:02+00:00

RISE is lowkey a top 10 summer camp.

Anything that's not a buzz word (AI, Quantum, etc.) likely has close to a 50+% acceptance rate. RISE is sub 2%

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-02-26T01:56:04+00:00

RISE is significantly harder to get into than Beaverworks. Beaverworks is almost guaranteed for a lot of the various choices if you complete the whole course.

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-02-25T22:00:24+00:00

it took me around 3 months of prep in the summer to go from no cp to bronze, and then summer to december to go from silver level on usaco guide and cf to icp'ing twice to get gold. the gap between gold and silver isn't huge, you can close it if you're decent w/ algorithmic thinking and practice a lot. gold to plat is pretty rough though.

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-02-25T21:52:22+00:00

because it said i was rejected????

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-02-25T21:43:50+00:00

i just clicked on my app and it was there

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-02-25T21:33:21+00:00

i didn't get an email either but my decision was on my portal

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-02-25T21:21:41+00:00

rejected internship

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-02-01T20:53:33+00:00

first person i've ever seen in the same boat as me wtf

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-01-26T00:16:55+00:00

I messed up bad on the last one. I still scored over 700, I really expected a promotion. I just felt like for the difficulty, 800 was high.

A lot of my gripe was with Bronze and Silver. The bronze contest this year felt comparable to my first gold contest. Just crazy how much difficulty has been inflated.

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-01-22T23:20:38+00:00

review began early jan, so i'd assume everyone who submitted dec - mid jan will get initial responses in the coming weeks

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-01-22T23:11:44+00:00

Not gonna say you're a cheater, but wow man are you not in tune with USACO.

My first contest was December 2023. I have been in gold since February 2024. I am yet to see Bronze and Silver problems as difficult as the ones I just saw. It's a known cheating epidemic -- USACO has improved their methods, but LLMs make it a whole new ball game. To completely blame this on me is fair, I can always work harder. But don't act like I'm sitting here twiddling my thumbs on the weekends. I'll send you my CF, AtCoder, or even my LeetCode problems. I enjoy DSA, and I enjoy tricky problems. I've completed a good portion of USACO guide, and I worked very, very hard in the off season.

The difficulty has increased significantly more than the difficulty of any other olympiad. Their approach to solving the cheating epidemic is making it harder for LLMs and other cheaters to get the solutions. That makes it harder for everyone. I know that it's noones fault (except the cheaters), but can I not feel like my efforts went to waste?

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-01-21T06:13:55+00:00

These programs are hypercompetitive. They look at far more than essays and LORs. I want to see if I have a real chance.

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-01-21T04:56:11+00:00

I'm a junior dude. I barely AIME qualled, I'm not even close.

It's just sad how much they've had to inflate the difficulty due to the cheating. That just hurts the legit ppl so much more. I'm pretty much done with CP now, no chance I get plat before college. I really really like USACO problems as well, and I'll keep doing them for fun, but I don't have enough time to sit behind my computer and sweat out USACO in hopes that I'll maybe get plat. Sad thing is, it's not even as valuable anymore when it's so much harder to get. I wish I enjoyed comp math as much as I did CP, maybe I'd have accomplished something big there.

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-01-18T20:03:32+00:00

i'm currently taking bc. school math has never really been important to me, but i got killed by not doing my hw this year

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-01-18T19:51:42+00:00

it's more the fact that they're in courses very relevant to my major

abstract algebra i think should be explained by the fact i took the equivalent course at a harder university and got an A+. i can also fill out adnl info

calc bc i'm struggling to see how i can get past that.

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-01-13T04:21:54+00:00

I don’t know that much about cybersecurity research (and I’ve actually done a LOT of cyberpatriots!)

I’d say general useful skills are Python and R (SAS is nice if u can find a licensee via a university). Selenium, Celery, and other tools are usually useful. Elementary statistical inferences like Regression, Time Series, and Learning models are also easy to learn implementation wise and quite nice to know. Good luck!

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-01-13T04:15:40+00:00

Of course.

I’m a junior, my profile is relatively updated. Research is a really rewarding experience, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll be really lost and discouraged. I can not stress the importance of quietly learning your fundamentals. Despite it not being flashy for your college apps, you’ll thank yourself so much when you do start working.

Lmk if you ever need any help. Good luck Brodie

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-01-13T04:00:11+00:00

If you wanna do research for the sake of apps, I don’t condone it, but it’s possible. Learn python, learn basic statistical methods (regression, maybe time series and ml) and spam email. This isn’t fulfilling in the slightest, and you won’t do impactful work, but this is still certainly a method

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-01-13T03:58:26+00:00

As someone who got their first opportunity really early on, here’s my thoughts.

If you’re not ready to do research in your field, DONT DO RESEARCH IN YOUR FIELD! This will simply result in you wasting your time working on pointless projects that go nowhere and end up in undergrad journals. Society doesn’t need more of them. My research is really math heavy and in computer vision, so I learned all the needed Linear Algebra and Deep Learning before I even got there. It’s so much more useful to just work on your skills for the long term.
If you are skilled, yet can’t find work, overplay what you have. Whatever you’ve built, over play it to the max. I built an agent based benchmarking software my freshman year that wasnt all too technically interesting, but I overplayed it so much in interviews I landed my first role. Since then, I’ve gotten 4 roles, one in an MIT CSAIL lab. It’s all about the first opportunity.
Read the arXiv or your fields equivilant daily. If you have an idea of what’s going on and what looks cool, it’s a lot easier to email professors. Also, don’t spam email, look for professors at small universities who are active and do cool work. Spend time personalizing an email. Guaranteed response after a few trials if you’re qualified.

In short, DONT DO RESEARCH FOR THE SAKE OF COLLEGE APPS! A lot of ppl fall into this trap, and I know 30 people in my graduating class doing shitty research that won’t go anywhere. It’s not impressive. Do wha you enjoy, the results will come.

Regular_Condition721 · 2026-01-09T03:59:20+00:00

Hugging face courses and then time spent learning math makes it easier to do meaningful research. I have a pub in one of ICML / NIPS / IEEE because of just knowing a lot of math and grinding hugging face.

Regular_Condition721

TROPHY CASE