Protocol: Spring 2026 ICPC Training Curriculum

Mission Statement

• Lead: Souradeep Banerjee
• Context: ACM @ ASU "Sunday Labs" (Spring 2026)
• Location: Durham Hall 106
• Target: Midterm Tournament (Mar 6) & Final ICPC Qualifier (May 1)

This curriculum bridges the gap between standard LeetCode "Interview Prep" and high-performance "Competitive Programming." While interview prep focuses on pattern recognition, this track enforces strict time-complexity constraints ($10^8$ operations per second) and C++ STL optimization.

The Roadmap

The curriculum is divided into six iterative sessions, moving from array manipulation to advanced graph theory.

Session	Topic	Focus	Date
S01	Foundations	Prefix Sums & $O(1)$ Querying	Jan 25
S02	Graphs	DFS/BFS & Connected Components	Feb 08
S03	Dynamic Programming I	Memoization & 1D State	Feb 22
S04	Mathematics	Number Theory & Modular Arithmetic	Mar 22
S05	Trees	Traversal & Range Queries	Apr 05
S06	Final Strategy	Advanced DP & Contest Strategy	Apr 19

Technical Prerequisites

1. Language: C++17 or higher (for STL support).
2. Environment: Local GCC setup or a cloud IDE (CPH extension recommended).
3. Core Knowledge: Big O Notation, basic Array/Vector manipulation.

Standard Template

For all sessions, we will utilize a standardized C++ template optimized for fast I/O. Please ensure you have an input.txt file in your local VS Code repository to pipe test cases efficiently.

// Compilation & Execution Instructions:
// g++ main.cpp -o main
// .\main
// PowerShell: Get-Content input.txt | .\main.exe
// Bash: cat input.txt | .\main.exe

#include <bits/stdc++.h>

using namespace std;
using ll = long long;

void solve() {
    // Algorithm logic goes here
}

int main() {
    // Fast I/O Optimization
    ios_base::sync_with_stdio(false);
    cin.tie(NULL);

    int t = 1;
    cin >> t;
    while (t--) {
        solve();
    }

    return 0;
}

Grading & Logistics

• Time: Sundays, 11:00 AM - 01:00 PM (ICPC Primer Slot).
• Location: Durham Hall 106.
• Sunday Labs: Our session is immediately followed by the ACM "Lunch & Social" hour (1:00 PM - 2:00 PM), providing a great opportunity to debrief on problems.
• Attendance: Not mandatory but highly correlated with tournament performance.