Skip to main content

2014

1st Virginia Tech High School Programming Contest​

announcement

24 teams from 7 high schools participated in our 1st Virginia Tech High School programming contest on Dec 6, 2014. The top team, TJHSST Freshmen, solved 9 problems! A total of 224 attempts were submitted, with 72 accepted runs. 20 out of 24 teams solved at least one problem.

Congratulations to the following teams:​

  1. Place: TJHSST Freshmen (Thomas Jefferson High School): Sujay Ratna, Shwetark Patel, William Li
  2. Place: Betaware 4 (Battlefield High School): Ethan Villagran, Ian Cabacungan, Nick Gill
  3. Place: CIT Team 1 (Deep Run High School): Roman Bohuk, Jake Smith, Seth Tenembaum

Acknowledgements​

This contest was organized by Dr. Godmar Back (Contest Director and Head Judge), and volunteers from the Virginia Tech ACM ICPC Programming Team (on picture, left to right: Daniel Gil, Rupin Khera, Larissa Perara, Dr. Back, Nick Sharp, Andriy Katkov, Harrison Fang.) Problems were created by Dr. Back, Nick Sharp, Andriy Katkov, and Daniel Gil.

We also thank the on-site coaches: Sharon McPherson, Joseph Palen, Brian Meermans, Ginny Listman, Liz Smith, Chris Foss, Sreenivas Ratna, and Linda Gooding.

For feedback, ideas, questions, etc. please email Dr. Godmar Back.

To be kept up to date about future contests, please join the vthscontest Google group.

Contest Description

Organization​

As part of our outreach, we will be organizing a programming contest for high schools in Virginia. Our first contest will be held online. Anyone enrolled in a high school is eligible to participate; however, you will need a teacher (or parent volunteer) functioning as the official team coach. Please see below for details of the rules.

The contest will be in the style of the ACM ICPC contest, with teams of 3 students sharing a computer to solve as many problems as possible within 5 hours. A problem is judged by whether it produces the expected output for a given input within an allotted time limit.

We anticipate that there will be widely varying levels of skills and accordingly, the problems will require varying levels of skill. We will include problems that require only simple I/O, control structures such as if/else and/or loops, as well as problems that require basic algorithms. To skillfully participate in a contest such as this one, participants need to quickly triage problems and solve the easiest ones first.

All problems will involve reading input line by line from standard input, and outputting an answer to standard output. (No other file I/O is allowed.) Coaches should make sure that contestants are familiar with this style of I/O. This may require the use of java.util.Scanner or similar classes in Java or raw_input() or sys.stdin or similar in Python.

Some of have asked for sample problems. Since this is our first contest, we do not have problems available from past years. At this point, I would recommend the use of online sites such as CodeForces. We are aiming at a level of difficulty you might find in a Div 2 contest in problems A-D.

Details​

When​

Sat, Dec 6, 2014. 9:30am-4pm.

Where​

All Online

Contact/Registration​

Registration is closed.

Schedule​

Regulation​

Rules​

  • Allowed languages are: Java, Python 2, Python 3, C, C++. Other languages may be added, but they must be supported in a Linux environment, so no Visual Basic.
  • There will be an original problem set with 6-8 problems of varying difficulty.
  • Teams of 3 sharing one computer, as in an ACM ICPC contest. You must have the ability to locally edit, compile, and test your code.
  • You will be using a web site to submit your solutions's source code (via PC^2 webclient).
  • Teams may not receive help from any human outside their team. The on-site coach is trusted with ensuring that.
  • The use of a printer, where available, is allowed and encouraged.
  • There is no sign-up fee.
  • There is no limit on the number of contestants a school can send.
  • Internet access is allowed. Code that was written before the contest may be used.

Requirements​

  • Internet Access

FAQ​