Learnings from TVS Credit Epic Challenge- By Harsh Agarwal from VIT, Bhopal

“Everybody should learn to program a computer because it teaches you how to think.”- Steve Jobs

It is this statement that kept us alive in situations when we had to challenge our brains to find solutions throughout the competition.

TVS Credit Epic Challenge, with a prestige brand value of TVS was a huge thing for us. Not only did it provide us with incentives, but benefited us in every way possible. It will be difficult to choose the right words to express our gratitude. But one thing that goes unsaid, this competition not only changed our present but also our future.

The challenging 3 rounds

TVS Credit Epic Challenge was well structured with three rounds that challenged us to the core, each requiring different skills to showcase to the panel. Following were the three rounds:

Round 1: Coding
Round 2: Problem Statement
Round 3: Expert Judgement

Every finalist team was judged by the respective heads of their honoured departments. Experts evaluated every aspect of the model to cover all minuscule things in the evaluation. A fixed time frame of 8 minutes was provided to each team to present the idea in front of the judges. Upon invitation for Code Linguistics, we presented our model in 7 minutes, keeping 1 minute aside to give our idea the best conclusion.

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Strategy for Coding

In the first coding round, the competition gave us the option to choose any one domain out of four;

Information Technology
Finance
Analytics and Strategy
Information Technology

Having a background in Computer Science, we chose Information Technology as our domain. Soon we started with our preparation for the first round after registering for the TVS Challenge from the Dare2Compete platform.

We were served with two questions about data structures and algorithms mixed with a combination of competitive programming. These questions seemed easy, thanks to our prior knowledge. Hence, we suggest having strong expertise in data structures and algorithms before entering into any coding round.

Winning against all odds

Multiple challenges welcomed us with open hands since the beginning of the competition. Lack of knowledge of the subject concerned, good communication skills, were few of them to mention, that took us more than two months to overcome.

Apart from this, the biggest challenge was for us to make it into the subsequent rounds as more than 20000+ students participated in the first round. Only 300 teams were selected from every four divisions, which means 1200 teams made it to the second round. Despite huge participation, Code Linguistics successfully made it to the second round where we were given two problem statements and we had to submit our idea for either of the ones.

The guiding light!

The second round of problem statements was a hard nut to crack. We took around two days to understand the problem statements when we realised we needed someone's guidance in it. And when it comes to guidance, college professors are the best ones to approach.

We did the same and approached one of our professors in the college Anand Motwani Sir. He gave us insights on how to cope up with the problem statements and hence, we were able to generate a solution. Not only this, multiple faculties shared tips and tricks with us for this competition. Ultimately, it was these inputs that made our competition learning a great success.

Becoming Top 10 Finalists

With sheer hard work and a bit of luck, our team was placed in the Top 10 position in the IT domain. We felt fortunate to be in the premier top 10, understanding the difficulty level of the competition, and the tough competition given by the previous winning team from IIT Delhi.

Takeaways

As a team of Code Linguists, we learned how to present ideas confidently in front of judges alongside handling the peer pressure in this competition. Also from making presentations, models, animated videos, and most importantly excelling in communication skills are some of the best things we learned from this TVS Credit Epic Challenge.

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Harsh Agarwal

Unstop Chief Igniter

Hey, This is Harsh Agarwal from VIT BHOPAL UNIVERSITY. An enthusiast and computer science lover from 3rd year. Excellent in team spirit and leadership.