YOUR COACH
Kevin Yang
ICPC World Finalist · USACO Platinum · Codeforces Grandmaster · Columbia University
Every session with Recursive Dragon is taught personally by Kevin Yang — an ICPC World Finalist, a former USACO Platinum competitor, and an active International Grandmaster on Codeforces, currently studying at Columbia University. That last credential is worth checking for yourself: the rating is live and public, and very few tutors in this market can point to one at all, let alone a current Grandmaster-level rating.
THE PATH
From USACO competitor to ICPC World Finals
I started where most of my students start: staring at a USACO Bronze problem with no idea how to begin. Years of deliberate, often frustrating practice took me through Silver, Gold, and Platinum, and into collegiate competitive programming at Columbia, culminating in a trip to the ICPC World Finals — the top tier of competitive programming that only a small number of teams worldwide qualify for each year. I still compete actively on Codeforces today, which means the techniques I teach are ones I'm actively using, not ones I learned once and now recite.
I coach because the biggest gap for most ambitious students isn't talent, it's method. Almost every student I meet has been taught to pattern-match: "this problem looks like a DP problem, so try DP." That gets you through Bronze and Silver. It falls apart at Gold and Platinum, where the actual skill being tested is reasoning from first principles under time pressure. That's what I actually teach.
When you work with me, you get the same coach in every session, from your student's first problem to their last promotion. I build the syllabus myself around what I see in our sessions, not around a fixed curriculum, and I stay involved between sessions through Discord, mock contests, and upsolve support — the full program is described on the programs page.
How I Coach
Three things I emphasize with every student, regardless of division.
Debugging as a discipline — stress testing against brute-force verifiers and sanitizers as standing practice, not a last resort
Proof-level correctness — knowing why a greedy or DP approach works, not just that it happened to pass
Complexity reasoned from code structure, not guessed from intuition or problem constraints alone
Recursive Dragon Student Promotions
Since July 2022, across the program's history
33
Bronze → Silver
14
Silver → Gold
6
Gold → Platinum
1
Platinum → Camp
Ready to get started?
Start with a free consultation — a call with me to discuss your student's current level and goals, and whether the program is the right fit.