USACO

2024-2025 Competition Schedule Released

We are looking forward to a competition season in 2024-2025 with four contests, much like in previous years. At the end of the season, teams will be chosen to represent the USA at the International Olympiad in Informatics in Bolivia and the European Girls Olympiad in Informatics in Germany.

Important notes regarding changes to contest structure for this season, in the interest of ensuring academic integrity:

Last year, we introduced the concept of a certified contest result --- obtained by taking the contest in a specific common time window when problems are first released. Since this has worked well, we are extending the use of certified contests to the gold division as well as the platinum division. In these divisions, problems will be first released at 12:00pm (noon) eastern time (ET) on the Saturday of the larger Friday-Monday contest timeline. Any student who begins the contest between 12:00pm and 12:15pm ET on that day will receive a certified score (treated by USACO staff as having higher potential credibility and weight than a non-certified score). Certified results are only possible in gold and platinum; the bronze and silver divisions will run as in the past, with problems available at the beginning of the Friday of the contest timeframe. In order to promote from gold to platinum, your score must be certified. In order to be considered as a contender for invitation to our summer training camp, you must have at least 3 certified scores out of our 4 monthly contests, one of which should be the final US Open contest (USACO coaches will consider any exceptional situations outside these parameters on a case-by-case basis).
Recall an important addition to our contest rules from last year clarifying that generative AI is prohibited during our contests, and that USA students are not allowed to use VPNs to obscure their IP addresses.

Outstanding Results at 2024 IOI and EGOI

We are thrilled by our outstanding results at the 2024 International Olympiad in Informatics in Alexandria, Egypt! Congratulations to Rain Jiang (gold, 5th overall), Agastya Goel (gold, 4th overall), Rohin Garg (silver), and Brian Xue (gold, 3rd overall), who represented the USA at the event.

Congratulations as well to Grace Li (gold, 8th overall), Yeyin (Eva) Zhu (gold, 2nd overall), Michelle Wei (silver), and Aurora Huang (silver) for their outstanding results while representing the USA at 2024 European Girls Olympiad in Informatics in the Netherlands!

2023-2024 Finalists Announced

The USACO is pleased to announce its finalists for the 2023-2024 season, all invited to participate in our training camp in late May / early June to compete for selection for the USA teams attending the International Olympiad in Informatics and the European Girls Olympiad in Informatics.

Our Mission

The USACO supports computing education in the USA and worldwide by identifying, motivating, and training high-school computing students at all levels. We provide:

Hundreds of hours of free on-line training resources and historical contest problems (complete with solutions) that students can use to improve their programming and computational problem-solving skills.
On-line programming contests (four per year) for students at all levels.
An intensive summer training camp, to which the top students in the USA are invited to further improve their skills and learn advanced material.
The opportunity for the top four students in the USA to represent their country at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), the most prestigious international algorithmic programming competition at the high-school level. We also select a team of the top four female high-school students in the USA to compete at the European Girls' Olympiad in Informatics (EGOI), a competition of similar prestige modeled after the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad.

We are indebted to our amazing volunteer staff and to our sponsors for their support of our mission.

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2024-2025 Schedule