“Like most of the freshmen I didn’t know about competitive programming before coming to college even though I was introduced to programming in 8th Grade in my school. Slowly, I developed interest in programming, as both computers and maths came easy to me. Later, I couldn’t find much time for programming mainly due to JEE preparations. Lack of resources and guidance, was also a major reason that I wasn’t able to excel in programming so it got limited to getting good grades in my assessments, which I easily managed to do. (I am ISC Computer Science topper)
After joining IITR in B.Tech. (Mechanical Engineering), I thought I won’t have enough chances to learn programming but one fine day in college, I randomly struck a conversation with Ketan Gupta (IOITC ’15), who introduced me to competitive programming and told me about CodeChef and other online judges and motivated me to participate in August Long challenge, in which I performed well considering it was my first contest. Later in the year, PAG recruitment commenced with online contests (Noobematics on Erdős) offering direct entry into the final round for top performers, while others would have to appear for the written test, which was based on logical and algorithmic puzzles followed by two rounds of interview to select nearly 15-16 people.
PAG comprises of some of the most brilliant minds of the campus. It organises various internal and open lectures on various algorithmic techniques. It also provides interesting tutorials, problems and editorials in its question series (QOTW) https://pag.sdslabs.co/blog/qotw-16.
PAG has been the most interesting time I had at IITR. Seniors are way too helpful. The interaction level is too good. I have learnt a lot and would love to share my knowledge with juniors in the coming years.
If it doesn’t challenge you , It won’t change you!”
Devanshu Agrawal, Mechanical 2nd Year, a.k.a. Deva2802