If you are a high school student aiming to become a coder then you should consider the USA Computing Olympiad or USACO course. Clearing your contests will enhance your programming skills. It will also prepare you to create excellent codes. Here is everything you need to know before registering for it.
Who is eligible?
You need to be eligible for the USA Computing Olympiad before registering. The good news is that everyone and anyone with a laptop and stable internet connection can take this contest including non-US students. However, not everyone can be part of the IO team. If you want to be part of the USA IO team then you should be a pre-college student, USA citizen or living in the USA during the first half of the academic year and must be enrolled for one semester in a junior or high school.
Whilst anyone from around the world can be a participant in the USA Computing Olympiad, only USA residents and citizens are eligible to join the team that represents the company at the international Olympiad of informatics including students who have educational commitments in other countries.
The test is aimed at high school children and this means that college students are not eligible to become finalists. Only high school students and middle school students are eligible for the IO team. You must be enrolled in at least one semester in a high school.
Time of the test
During your USACO preparation, it is crucial to know how you are timed for the exam. The contests are for four consecutive hours. The contest window is during the weekend from Friday to Monday. You can sit for the test at any time. It can be stopped once you start timing. The test ends after four hours.
The number of problems
There are several divisions of the contest – Bronze, silver, gold and platinum. We also have advanced. You can only appear for one division at a time. You cannot sit for gold or silver without clearing your bronze division. There are three questions to solve in each test no matter the division you are doing.
Answers
There are three questions and for each question, there will be ten to twenty test cases. In short, there are input data through which you are going to run the program through. The lesser the number of test cases, the more marks each test carries. It is important to remember that this contest is about judging if you can do well in a fast working environment. Learning a lot of algorithms will not help with this contest. You should practice enough to be an efficient coder.
The exam process
A program is run against different judging test cases. Every participant gets feedback in a coloured box after that. A green box will be for correct answers while a red box will be for wrong answers. A letter will pop up in the box for incorrect answers explaining why the answer is wrong for your USACO question.