The MIT Programming Contest (2007-08)

Congratulations to Andrew Lutomirski, Bohua Zhan, and Xuancheng Shao for winning Second place, gold medal and becoming North America champions at the 2008 ACM World Finals in Banff, Canada!

Announcement on the EECS Home page

Announcement on the MIT Home page

News Archive

• Congratulations to Andrew, Bohua, and Xuancheng for winning the regional contest and making it to the World Finals! The team will have regular practice sessions until the final competition. Volunteeers to practice with the team are welcome. Send an e-mail if interested.
• We will be having a third team contest on Sunday, October 12
• The preliminaries will be held on Saturday, October 20 in Springfield, MA
• We will be having a second team contest on Sunday, October 7
• The results from the individual round are now available.
• The problem set for the individual round is online.
• To sign up for the mailing list of the ACM Programming Contest, please subscribe to acmpc. (To do that, type blanche acmpc -a $USER at an athena prompt)

Schedule

• MIT Individual Contest: Sunday, September 23, 2007 (12-5pm); Room 1-115.
• MIT Team Contest 1: Sunday, September 30, 2007 (12-5pm); Room 1-115.
• MIT Team Contest 2: Sunday, October 7, 2007 (12-5pm); Room 1-115.
• MIT Team Contest 3: Sunday, October 12, 2007 (12-5pm); Room 1-115.
• Preliminary Contest: Saturday, October 20, 2007; Western New England College, Springfield, MA
• Northeast North America Regionals: Saturday, November 10, 2007; Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY (rules)
• World Finals: April 6-10, 2008; Banff, Alberta, Canada.

About

If you like programming and solving problems, we invite you to participate in the MIT Individual Programming Contest. If you're one of the best out there, this is your chance to shine, and join a team consisting of the top programmers at MIT. Even if you don't think you're good enough to compete in the World Programming Finals, you can see how you compare to the best at MIT, and possibly surprise yourself.

We're particularly interested in people who have either of:

• extensive C/C++/Java programming experience;
• experience in contests such as the IOI, USACO, IMO, or USAMO
• taken classes like 6.001, 6.046, 6.170

Contestants must be at least half-time undergraduates. A contestant can also be a first/second year graduate student, if the contestant first time enrolled in a university no earlier than 2002. For more details, see the "eligibility tree"; contact me if you have questions/concerns. (Students in coop programs such as 6A can participate as well.)

If you are interested or want more information, e-mail me at .

Contests

The top performers of the MIT Individual Programming Contest will not only earn glory within MIT, they will also be invited to join the MIT Programming Team, and participate in the 2008 ACM Programming Contest. We will use the results of the individual contest to choose several top teams. Each of these teams (and any other teams formed by interested students), consisting of three people sharing one computer, will compete in the MIT team contest, with the results of both contests used to help select the team chosen to represent MIT in the ACM programming contest. The individual contest is mandatory for anyone who wishes to represent MIT in the ACM contests.

The team contests will be usually 5 hours in length, and the teams will use C/C++/Java on Unix boxes. The MIT team will participate in the Preliminary ACM contest, at Western New England College. The top teams in this contest advance to compete in the Northeast Regional ACM contest, at Rochester Institute of Technology. A top two finish in this contest should guarantee a spot in the prestigious ACM World Finals, to be held in Banff, Alberta, Canada. All travel expenses for team members will be covered by MIT and the ACM.

The organizers at MIT

This year the MIT Programming Contest is organized by professor Martin Rinard and students Zoran Dzunic, Jelani Nelson, and Ivaylo Riskov. Some of the system/materials were developed by Percy Liang (one of the former coaches). All organization and coaching work is done on a volunteer basis in a limited amount of time. We will do our best to run the contest as smoothly as possible, but be prepared for some glitches.

Contest Tips

• Practice! There are hundreds of practice ACM problems available at the Valladolid Online Judge. You can do problems and submit them for automatic grading.
• Since all problems regardless of difficulty have the same weight and the time recorded for each problem that you solve starts counting from the beginning of the contest, it is advisable to solve easier problems before harder problems.