CS Events

This is an incomplete list of programming competitions. Join the “Math & CS” announcements group or the Competition Coding club for updates.

Recommended entry points: Advent of Code is a wonderful on-ramp for high school students. The USACO Guide is for the more competitive students interested in algorithms. Google’s KickStart was wonderful, but now discontinued (see below).

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Advent of Code is a Christmas-themed sequence of 25 puzzles. Very accessible. My AP Computer Science A students felt very accomplished when they started solving them on their own.

ProCom is a Chicago-area contest for high school students written by Mr. Matthew Fahrenbaher of Niles West. There are several years’ worth on HackerRank. You need to make an account, log in, and then sign up for the contests to see the questions. My experience is that direct links into the contest do not work - you need to go through the signup page.

  • ProCom 3.0 from 2017
  • ProCom 4.0 from 2018
  • ProCom 5.0 from 2019
  • ProCom 6.0 from 2020

USA Computing Olympiad and especially the nicely structured USACO Training Guide is one place to start learning about “competitive CS”.

The International Computer Programming Contest (ICPC) is a college-level programming contest suitable for high school students through advanced college students. ProCom is modeled after this style of contest. Preparation site. There is supposed to be an online archive but I had trouble accessing it. Search for “ICPC problem archive” and you will find several.

Some people like random problems from HackerRank, LeetCode, and CodeForces. Those can be a little unstructured for a beginner. I listed them in decreasing order of my own preference.

Major Google-Sponsored Competitions

In my opinion, these are the gold standard… hard, brainy contests.

  • KickStart. Accessible to students who know AP Computer Science A. Everything but the hardest problems can be done with high school knowledge. Dates: monthly, March through November. (Long season!)
  • CodeJam. A more math-focused coding competition. Knowledge of high school math competition topics is enough. (Example: how to find the greatest common divisor using the Euclidean algorithm.) Dates: begins mid-March.
  • HashCode. A team event totally unlike any other competition you have tried. Each contest centers around a single problem for which it is totally impossible to find an optimal answer. Teams produce the best answers they can find. High school teams can be in the top 10%! Very satisfying for experienced programmers. Dates: mid-April.

Note: the last year these competitions ran was the 2022 year. The site went off-line in 2023. They are only available in the Google competition archive.

Capture the Flag

Capture the flag (CtF) competitions are generally less algorithmically focused, with more small tasks to complete.

  • picoCTF. “Putting education ahead of competition. The largest high school hacking competition now provides year-round cyber security education content for learners of all skill levels.” Based at Carnegie-Mellon University. Dates: mid-March.

    Past students have reported that this is a great on-ramp for computer security. One is still doing CTF competitions at his job, five years after leaving Whitney Young.

  • Capture the Flag Contest List. A list of upcoming contests globally. Good to look at once you are hooked.

Last modified August 19, 2023: Resources renamed to docs. (29a8319)