Chapter 66: DSA Study Plan

Here is a realistic, detailed, and very practical DSA Study Plan that works in 2025–2026 for most Indian students who want to prepare seriously for:

• Product-based companies (Amazon, Google, Atlassian, Uber, Flipkart, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Cred, Meesho, Swiggy, Razorpay, startups 25–70+ LPA)
• Off-campus opportunities
• Internships at top companies
• Good college placements

This plan is not a random list of topics. It is ordered by priority, real interview weightage, learning curve, and how much time you actually need for each phase.

Who is this plan for?

• 2nd / 3rd / final year students
• People with 4–9 months of serious preparation time
• People who can code 4–8 hours/day consistently
• Goal = strong enough to clear most OA + coding rounds + 1–2 system design rounds

Realistic Timeline Overview (adjust according to your starting level)

Detailed Phase-by-Phase Study Plan (2025–2026)

Phase 1 – Foundation & Warm-up (4–6 weeks)

Goal: Build confidence, master syntax, understand complexity, get comfortable with easy-medium problems

Topics & Problems (solve in this order)

1. Time & Space Complexity (1 week)
   • Understand Big-O, amortized analysis
   • Solve 10–15 basic questions on LeetCode Explore → Complexity card
2. Arrays – Very High Weightage (2–2.5 weeks)
   • Two Sum
   • Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock (multiple variations)
   • Maximum Subarray (Kadane)
   • Move Zeroes
   • Remove Duplicates from Sorted Array
   • Rotate Array
   • Majority Element
   • Sort Colors (Dutch National Flag)
   • Trapping Rain Water
3. Hashing / HashMap / HashSet (1.5 weeks)
   • Contains Duplicate
   • Longest Consecutive Sequence
   • Subarray Sum Equals K
   • Group Anagrams
   • Top K Frequent Elements
   • Valid Anagram
4. Binary Search (including binary search on answer) (1–1.5 weeks)
   • Binary Search (basic)
   • Search in Rotated Sorted Array
   • Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array
   • Koko Eating Bananas
   • Capacity To Ship Packages Within D Days
   • Aggressive Cows / Book Allocation / Painter’s Partition

Resources for Phase 1

• LeetCode Explore → Array / Hash Table / Binary Search cards
• Striver A2Z Sheet → Step 1 to Step 8
• Love Babbar 450 → Arrays & Searching section
• Take U Forward YouTube → Array playlists

Target: 120–160 problems (mostly easy-medium)

Phase 2 – Core Data Structures (8–10 weeks)

5. Linked List (1.5–2 weeks)
   • Reverse Linked List (iterative + recursive)
   • Middle of Linked List
   • Detect Cycle (Floyd)
   • Remove Nth from End
   • Merge Two Sorted Lists
   • Add Two Numbers
   • Palindrome Linked List
6. Stack & Queue (1.5 weeks)
   • Valid Parentheses
   • Next Greater Element
   • Largest Rectangle in Histogram
   • Min Stack
   • Implement Queue using Stacks
7. Binary Tree (2–2.5 weeks)
   • Level Order Traversal
   • Pre/In/Post-order (recursive + iterative)
   • Maximum Depth
   • Invert Binary Tree
   • Diameter of Binary Tree
   • Lowest Common Ancestor
   • Same Tree / Symmetric Tree
8. Binary Search Tree (1 week)
   • Validate BST
   • Kth Smallest Element
   • LCA in BST
   • Inorder Successor
9. Heap / Priority Queue (1–1.5 weeks)
   • Kth Largest Element
   • Merge K Sorted Lists
   • Top K Frequent Elements
   • Sliding Window Maximum

Target: 150–200 problems

Phase 3 – Advanced & Very High Weightage (10–14 weeks)

10. Graph – BFS & DFS (3–4 weeks)
    • Number of Islands
    • Rotten Oranges
    • Word Ladder
    • Course Schedule (cycle + topological sort)
    • Clone Graph
    • Pacific Atlantic Water Flow
11. Greedy (1.5–2 weeks)
    • Jump Game I & II
    • Gas Station
    • Task Scheduler
    • Candy
    • Non-overlapping Intervals
12. Dynamic Programming (6–8 weeks – most important phase)
    • 1D DP: Climbing Stairs, House Robber, Coin Change, Partition Equal Subset Sum
    • 2D DP: Unique Paths, Longest Common Subsequence, Edit Distance
    • DP on grids: Minimum Path Sum, Cherry Pickup
    • DP on strings: Longest Palindromic Substring, Regular Expression Matching
    • DP on subsequences: Longest Increasing Subsequence, Longest Arithmetic Subsequence

Target: 200–300 problems (DP needs the most time)

Recommended Resources (2025–2026)

Realistic Weekly Targets (serious preparation)

Final Summary – Realistic DSA Syllabus 2025–2026

Must master (solve 150–250 problems here)

1. Arrays + Hashing + Two Pointers + Sliding Window
2. Binary Search (classical + on answer)
3. Linked List
4. Stack & Queue
5. Binary Tree traversals + medium tree problems
6. BST basics
7. Heap / Priority Queue
8. Graph BFS/DFS + cycle + shortest path
9. Greedy
10. Dynamic Programming (this is the make-or-break topic)

High-reward extras (solve 30–80 each if time permits)

• Trie
• Bit Manipulation
• Segment Tree / Fenwick Tree
• Advanced Graph (MST, Dijkstra, Bellman-Ford, strongly connected components)

Do you want me to:

• Give you a ready 3-month / 6-month plan with weekly targets?
• Share 50–70 most repeated interview problems right now?
• Deep-dive into one topic (DP, Graph, Binary Search…) with 8–10 strong problems?
• Explain how to practice (LeetCode vs Codeforces vs Striver sheet vs company lists)?

Just tell me what you need — I’ll give it in very detailed, realistic, teacher-style format 😊