✅ 1. 6-Month DSA Strategy to Crack FAANG Companies

🔍 Assumptions:

• You have basic knowledge of DSA (like arrays, strings, loops, recursion).
• You can code in at least one language: Java / Python / C++.
• You're aiming for coding interviews and online assessments.
• You're ready to commit 2–3 hours/day, 5–6 days/week.

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📆 6-Month Roadmap Overview

Month	Focus Area	Key Goals
Month 1	DSA Fundamentals + Problem Solving Patterns	Master Arrays, Strings, Hashing, Two Pointers, Sliding Window, Binary Search
Month 2	Recursion & Backtracking	Understand recursion deeply, solve backtracking patterns
Month 3	Trees, Graphs, BFS/DFS	Build a strong foundation on Tree traversal, Graph algorithms
Month 4	Heaps, Tries, Segment Trees, Union-Find	Learn advanced data structures used in system design and optimization
Month 5	DP (Dynamic Programming)	Master classic DP problems and patterns
Month 6	Mock Interviews + Optimization + LC Hards	Practice under time pressure, review mistakes, refine communication

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💡 Weekly Plan Template (Flexible)

Weekday	Time	Activity
Mon/Wed/Fri	2 hrs	Learn new topic + Solve 3–5 LC problems
Tue/Thu/Sat	2 hrs	Revise previous topics + Blind 75 / Grind 75
Sun	3–4 hrs	Mock Interview + Weak area revision

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✅ 2. Trackable DSA Progress Sheet (Notion/Excel Style)

Here’s a template structure you can use in Notion or Excel:

Topic	Subtopic	Difficulty	Problems	Completed? (✅)	Notes
Arrays	Two Sum	Easy	[LeetCode 1]	✅	Hash Map usage
Arrays	Sliding Window Max	Hard	[LeetCode 239]	❌	Use Deque
Strings	Longest Without Repeating	Medium	[LeetCode 3]	✅	Two Pointers
Recursion	Fibonacci	Easy	[LeetCode 509]	✅	Memoization
...	...	...	...	...	...

🔗 Google Sheet Template: Make a Copy Here

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✅ 3. Topic-wise Breakdown (Order of Importance)

This is the order FAANG companies expect you to master:

⭐ Top Priority

1. Arrays & Strings
2. Two Pointers
3. Sliding Window
4. Binary Search
5. Hashing / Maps
6. Sorting Algorithms
7. Greedy Algorithms
8. BFS / DFS (Graphs & Trees)
9. Dynamic Programming (DP)
10. Backtracking

🧠 Advanced but Must-Know

1. Trie
2. Union-Find / Disjoint Set
3. Segment Trees
4. Heaps / Priority Queues
5. Bit Manipulation
6. Monotonic Stack / Queue
7. Binary Indexed Trees (Fenwick Trees)

📈 System Design Related (Optional for SDE Roles)

1. LRU Cache
2. Design Twitter / Autocomplete / Search Suggestions
3. Concurrent Data Structures

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✅ 4. 100 Most Frequently Asked FAANG DSA Questions

Sorted by frequency across Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Apple:

#	Question	Difficulty	Tags
1	Two Sum	Easy	Array, Hash Map
2	Valid Parentheses	Easy	Stack
3	Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters	Medium	Two Pointers, Sliding Window
4	Median of Two Sorted Arrays	Hard	Binary Search
5	Longest Palindromic Substring	Medium	String, Two Pointers
6	Container With Most Water	Medium	Two Pointers
7	3Sum	Medium	Two Pointers, Sorting
8	Remove Nth Node From End of List	Medium	Linked List, Two Pointers
9	Merge Two Sorted Lists	Easy	Linked List
10	Generate Parentheses	Medium	Backtracking
11	Merge k Sorted Lists	Hard	Heap, Divide and Conquer
12	Swap Nodes in Pairs	Medium	Linked List
13	Reverse Nodes in k-Group	Hard	Linked List
14	Climbing Stairs	Easy	DP
15	Coin Change	Medium	DP
16	Longest Increasing Subsequence	Medium	DP
17	Unique Paths	Medium	DP
18	Word Break	Medium	DP, BFS
19	House Robber	Easy	DP
20	Decode Ways	Medium	DP
21	Minimum Path Sum	Medium	DP, Matrix
22	Edit Distance	Hard	DP
23	Partition Equal Subset Sum	Medium	DP
24	Course Schedule	Medium	Graph, BFS
25	Course Schedule II	Medium	Graph, Topological Sort
26	Number of Islands	Medium	DFS, BFS
27	Clone Graph	Medium	BFS, DFS
28	Pacific Atlantic Water Flow	Medium	BFS, DFS
29	Alien Dictionary	Hard	Graph, Topological Sort
30	Word Ladder	Medium	BFS
31	Word Ladder II	Hard	BFS, DFS
32	Evaluate Reverse Polish Notation	Medium	Stack
33	Basic Calculator II	Medium	Stack
34	Largest Rectangle in Histogram	Hard	Stack
35	Trapping Rain Water	Hard	Two Pointers, Stack
36	Product of Array Except Self	Medium	Prefix Sum
37	Spiral Matrix	Medium	Matrix
38	Rotate Image	Medium	Matrix
39	Set Matrix Zeroes	Medium	Matrix
40	Search a 2D Matrix	Medium	Binary Search
41	Kth Smallest Element in a Sorted Matrix	Medium	Binary Search, Heap
42	Meeting Rooms II	Medium	Heap, Greedy
43	Task Scheduler	Medium	Greedy, Math
44	Jump Game	Medium	Greedy
45	Jump Game II	Medium	Greedy
46	Gas Station	Medium	Greedy
47	Majority Element	Easy	Hash Map, Boyer-Moore
48	Find All Anagrams in a String	Medium	Sliding Window
49	Permutations	Medium	Backtracking
50	Permutations II	Medium	Backtracking
51	Combinations	Medium	Backtracking
52	Combination Sum	Medium	Backtracking
53	Letter Combinations of a Phone Number	Medium	Backtracking
54	Subsets	Medium	Backtracking
55	Subsets II	Medium	Backtracking
56	Word Search	Medium	Backtracking
57	Sudoku Solver	Hard	Backtracking
58	N-Queens	Hard	Backtracking
59	N-Queens II	Hard	Backtracking
60	Implement Trie (Prefix Tree)	Medium	Trie
61	Word Search II	Hard	Trie
62	Design Add and Search Words Data Structure	Medium	Trie
63	Find Median from Data Stream	Hard	Heap
64	Top K Frequent Elements	Medium	Heap
65	K Closest Points to Origin	Medium	Heap
66	Merge Intervals	Medium	Sorting
67	Insert Interval	Medium	Sorting
68	Non-overlapping Intervals	Medium	Greedy
69	Meeting Rooms	Easy	Sorting
70	Minimum Number of Arrows to Burst Balloons	Medium	Greedy
71	Assign Cookies	Easy	Greedy
72	Huffman Encoding	Medium	Greedy
73	Binary Tree Inorder Traversal	Easy	DFS
74	Validate Binary Search Tree	Medium	DFS
75	Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree	Medium	DFS
76	Construct Binary Tree from Preorder and Inorder Traversal	Medium	DFS
77	Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum	Hard	DFS
78	Populating Next Right Pointers in Each Node	Medium	BFS
79	Populating Next Right Pointers in Each Node II	Medium	BFS
80	Binary Tree Level Order Traversal	Medium	BFS
81	Binary Tree Zigzag Level Order Traversal	Medium	BFS
82	Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree	Hard	DFS
83	Recover Binary Search Tree	Hard	DFS
84	Find Duplicate Subtrees	Medium	DFS
85	Flip Equivalent Binary Trees	Medium	DFS
86	Count Complete Tree Nodes	Medium	DFS
87	Flatten Binary Tree to Linked List	Medium	DFS
88	Binary Tree Cameras	Hard	DFS
89	Rotting Oranges	Medium	BFS
90	Keys and Rooms	Medium	DFS
91	Redundant Connection	Medium	Union-Find
92	Number of Provinces	Medium	DFS
93	Accounts Merge	Medium	DFS
94	Longest Univalue Path	Medium	DFS
95	Delete Node in a BST	Medium	BST
96	Convert Sorted List to Binary Search Tree	Medium	DFS
97	Binary Tree Pruning	Medium	DFS
98	Flip Game II	Medium	DFS
99	The Maze II	Medium	BFS
100	Cheapest Flights Within K Stops	Medium	BFS, Dijkstra

📌 Tip: Prioritize Top 50 most frequent LeetCode problems first.

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✅ 5. Must-Know DSA Patterns

These are essential problem-solving patterns that appear repeatedly in FAANG interviews:

Pattern	Description	Example Problems
Two Pointers	Used in arrays and linked lists	Two Sum, Three Sum, Remove Duplicates
Sliding Window	Efficient subarray processing	Longest Substring, Max Consecutive Ones
Binary Search	For sorted arrays and binary search on answer	Find Peak Element, Koko Eating Bananas
Greedy Algorithms	Choose optimal local solution	Jump Game, Meeting Rooms
Backtracking	Recursive exploration	Permutations, N-Queens, Sudoku
Divide and Conquer	Split and combine solutions	Merge K Sorted Lists, Merge Sort
Dynamic Programming (DP)	Optimal substructure + overlapping subproblems	House Robber, Longest Increasing Subsequence
BFS / DFS	Tree and graph traversal	Number of Islands, Word Ladder
Trie	Prefix-based searches	Word Search II, Implement Trie
Heap / Priority Queue	Efficient retrieval of max/min elements	Top K Frequent Elements, Find Median
Monotonic Stack / Queue	Maintain increasing/decreasing sequences	Daily Temperatures, Largest Rectangle in Histogram
Union-Find (Disjoint Set)	Detect cycles in graphs	Redundant Connection, Number of Provinces

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✅ 6. Best Resources & Mock Interview Prep

🎥 YouTube Channels

• NeetCode – Clean, concise explanations for top LC problems
• Tech Dose – Great for DP, Trees, Graphs
• Errichto – Competitive programming style walkthroughs
• Abdul Bari – Theory and Algorithms explained clearly
• Take U Forward – Indian-friendly coding interviews prep

📚 LeetCode Resources

• Blind 75
• Grind 75
• FAANG Tagged Problems
• Top Interview Questions
• LeetCode Premium (if possible) – for company-tagged questions

🧪 Mock Interview Platforms

• Pramp – Free peer-to-peer mock interviews
• Interviewing.io – Real engineer mocks with feedback
• Gainlo.co – Paid FAANG-style mocks
• LeetCode Mock Interview – Simulated environment
• CodeSignal – Company-level practice and assessment

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✅ Bonus: How to Stay Consistent

• Use a habit tracker app (e.g., Habitica, Loop Habit Tracker)
• Set weekly goals (e.g., "Complete 20 LC problems")
• Track progress daily using your sheet
• Review every weekend – what worked, what didn’t?
• Join a Discord group or study buddy
• Reward yourself after milestones (e.g., watch a movie, eat out)

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🏁 Final Tips

• Focus more on problem-solving logic than just code.
• Write clean code with comments during interviews.
• Explain your thought process during mocks.
• Practice writing code without auto-complete.
• Simulate real interview conditions – no hints, timed.

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