LeetCode and DSA Roadmap: A 12-Week Coding Interview Study Plan
A structured 90-day roadmap for preparing for US technical coding interviews, written for international students and other candidates working through data structures and algorithms. The guide groups LeetCode practice into recurring problem patterns, maps each week of a twelve-week plan to specific topics and a target problem count, summarises what large tech employers tend to emphasise in their interview loops, and collects timing rules, common mistakes and study resources.
Five core problem patterns
Practice is organised around five recurring patterns: arrays and strings, linked lists, trees and graphs, dynamic programming, and sliding window. Each pattern lists its must-know LeetCode problems by number and difficulty, how frequently that problem type tends to appear, an estimated time to work through the set, and the companies where it is common. The stated goal is recognising patterns rather than memorising individual solutions.
The twelve-week study schedule
The plan moves from arrays, two pointers and hash tables through linked lists, stacks and queues, tree traversal, graph search, dynamic programming, backtracking, heaps, greedy, binary search and bit manipulation, finishing with system design basics, mock interviews and company-specific review. Each week carries a target problem count and study hours, and the page argues that solving a few problems daily beats weekend cramming.
Company-specific preparation
Separate profiles for Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Apple summarise the topics each tends to emphasise, the relative difficulty of its questions, how many interview rounds candidates typically face, and one preparation tip apiece — for example weighting Amazon's Leadership Principles, or preparing for optimisation follow-ups at Google.
Practice timing, mistakes and resources
Practice guidance includes per-difficulty time limits — roughly 15-20 minutes for an easy problem, 25-35 for a medium and 40-50 for a hard one — plus a suggested breakdown of a 45-minute interview across clarifying, designing, coding, testing and optimising. A list of common mistakes and a short set of books, video explanations and mock interview platforms close out the page.