Hello everyone, In this blog, I have given some relevant logic on why you are stuck between pupil and expert. Please at least skim through the text once to get the idea.

I am a noob-coder so, don't expect some algo material in this blog. However, if you are stuck between pupil and expert and feeling sad (like I do) because we are not getting any motivation, as the hard work we put in doesn't correspond with the result, then this blog is definitely for you.

I started code forces in mid-2020, wasn't regular gave some contests that time, I had zero knowledge of any DSA concepts. Barely knew STL, and now I have done DSA and Advanced Algorithms courses in my college, in which I performed greatly. Solved all the standard questions of DP & graph. But apparently, I am performing worse than before, so I went to the old contest that I have solved previously in which I was able to solve A and B getting me to a rating around 1340, I was easily able to solve A, B and C under 45 mins. I realised some things have changed, or maybe it could be that I just got lucky with the C problem. Then I tried to solve the ladder questions rated around 1300 but all these questions are from 2-3 years back, and boom I realised that 1300 rating questions are just too simple for me. But again in the recent contest, I struggle with 1400 rated questions, how is this possible???

But, recently I read a blog of Wind_Eagle (blog link), which was about the cheaters in codeforces. This opened my eye, I dig deep into this cheater thing, and realized that the core reason a cheater is maybe because he wanted to gain a decent title of codeforces (for eg. EXPERT) that will help him/her in their Resume.

So, what might be happening that a decent rank coder says above 1700-1800 rate is there, I will call him the SuperSpreader.

SuperSpreader will solve a question during the contest and through cheating groups, he will sell cheaters his solution. Now, the only one that's going to affect by this is none other than a pupil or a specialist. The ones that are around the same rank of the SuperSpreader will solve the question at the same time as him and hence the cheaters won't affect them.

Conclusion: Currently, all the questions that are rated below 1600 are having highly inflated ratings. If you are at 1300 rating then probably your real rating will be around 1500, when your real skills will reach a stage of about 1800 then only you will start to see a significant change in your ratings. That means reaching the Candidate Master gap from an expert will now become way less than it used to before while reaching an expert will require a lot more effort. So, be strong mentally give old virtual contests for a confidence boost. And keep the grind on.

If you think it was logical, then do give it an upvote. Thanks!!!

Edit: In India, companies directly shortlist students having a title of expert in codeforces. Any Indian can confirm that. Having this as the only reference I wrote this blog.