Interview Preparation Roadmap

As I get ready to head to the U.S. for my master’s in computer science, it’s time to buckle down and start prepping for those dreaded technical interviews-especially with the current tech winter looming.

To stay ahead of the game, I’ve put together a topic-wise problem list on LeetCode to tackle interview questions one step at a time. Along the way, I’ll also be writing detailed solutions and explanations for some of the problems I solve. Not only will this help me really understand the concepts, but it’s also a great way to build my problem-solving memory bank.

Oh, and bonus: it’s also the perfect chance to practice my English writing and get better at explaining things clearly. Let’s see where this journey takes me!

Dynamic Programming, Greedy, Two Pointers

1. 26th Jan 3429. Paint House IV (medium)

   notes: make sure how to move the frame under certain constrains.

2. 27th Jan 3434. Maximum Frequency After Subarray Operation (medium)
3. 28th Jan 3428. Maximum and Minimum Sums of at Most Size K Subsequences (medium)

   notes: Think about contribution.

4. 29th Jan 3424. Minimum Cost to Make Arrays Identical (medium)

   notes: Understand the problem.

5. 30th Jan 3418. Maximum Amount of Money Robot Can Earn (medium)
6. 2nd Feb 3414. Maximum Score of Non-overlapping Intervals (hard)
7. 7th Feb 3413. Maximum Coins From K Consecutive Bags (medium)

   notes: Make sure boundary correction.

8. 7th Feb 3410. Maximize Subarray Sum After Removing All Occurrences of One Element (hard)
9. 15th Feb 3409. Longest Subsequence With Decreasing Adjacent Difference (medium)

   notes: Notice the range of the number.

10. 15th Feb 3403. Find the Lexicographically Largest String From the Box I (medium)

    notes: Should be easy.

11. 15th Feb 3397. Maximum Number of Distinct Elements After Operations (medium)

    notes: Should be intuitive.

12. 15th Feb 3393. Count Paths With the Given XOR Value (medium)

    notes: Should be intuitive.

13. 20th Feb 3439. Reschedule Meetings for Maximum Free Time I (medium)

    notes: Think about the feature of moving a box orderly.

14. 22th Feb 3440. Reschedule Meetings for Maximum Free Time II (medium)

    notes: Also think about the contribution of each move.

15. 22th Feb 3389. Minimum Operations to Make Character Frequencies Equal (hard)
16. 4th Mar 3388. Count Beautiful Splits in an Array (medium)

    notes: Use string hashing technique for convenience.

17. 5th Mar 3367. Maximize Sum of Weights after Edge Removals (hard)

Graph (BFS, DFS, Tree, …)

1. 9th Mar 3419. Minimize the Maximum Edge Weight of Graph (medium)

   notes: Use concepts of minimum spaning tree.

2. 10th Mar 3387. Maximize Amount After Two Days of Conversions (medium)

   notes: Use high-precision floating-point.

3. 10th Mar 3380. Maximum Area Rectangle With Point Constraints I (medium)

   notes: Should be easy when it’s constrained to be parallel to the axes.