About the Contest

Make sure to check the rules for the complete, official description of the contest requirements. The contest is a multi-tiered competition among teams of students representing institutions of higher education. Teams first compete in the Regional Contests; from there, the top-placing teams from each school advance to the North American Championship, and then to World Finals.

The Mid-Atlantic Regional Contest lasts for five hours. Each team of three students tries to solve as many problems as possible, programming the solutions in C++, Java, Python 3, or Kotlin. The team that solves the most problems correctly wins, with ties broken by the least total time (the sum of the times consumed for each problem solved, from the beginning of the contest to the time the correct solution is submitted). A penalty of 20 minutes for each incorrect submission is added to the total time. The penalty only applies if the problem was eventually solved correctly.

Regional contests mirror the atmosphere of the international contest. There is a balloon color for each problem, and a T-shirt color for each group of people (contestant, staff, coach). Only contestants and staff are allowed in the contest area.

Contest Environment

Languages — C, C++, Java 11, Python 3 (w/ standard library), Kotlin

IDE — Eclipse, VSCode

Editors — VIM, EMACS

OS — UNIX/LINUX. Printing will be via command-line, so know ls, cd (and maybe how TAB auto-completes and up-arrow repeats commands), and where your IDE puts your file!

Teams

Teams may be composed of students enrolled at least half-time in a degree program at their school, including co-op students in good academic standing. See the official rules for exact team composition and eligibility.

Reference Materials

Teams may bring any non-machine-readable references that they wish. This includes books, printed notes, and written handwritten notes. Electronics and removable media are prohibited. Language APIs will also be available during the practice sessions and contest.

Mid-Atlantic Region

If your school falls within another region but you wish to participate in this one, you must contact the Director of Regional Contests to receive permission. Please check the rules at the International Contest site for more details (under “Where to Compete”). The Mid-Atlantic Contest will be conducted over a network comprising several geographically distributed sites throughout the region. Teams can participate from the site of their choice, subject to available space (see the registration section for more information on how teams are assigned to sites).

Example Schedule

The schedule at each site may vary slightly, with the exception of the time of the actual competition, which will take place from 14:00 to 19:00 ET.

Here are the site-specific pages (including schedule) for Christopher Newport University, James Madison University, Johns Hopkins, UNC Chapel Hill, Virginia Tech, and Wilkes University.
These specific schedules may differ from the following sample (except for the 14:00-19:00 contest, which is fixed).

09:00–09:45 volunteers begin final setup
09:45–10:30 registration and light breakfast; distribute t-shirts etc.
10:30–11:30 welcome, introduction, rules, orientation
11:30–12:30 practice problem
12:30–13:40 lunch
14:00–19:00 competition 1hr later than last year!
19:00–20:00 dinner
19:30–20:15 results, and awards presentation

See the sidebar-links above, for site-specific information.

Scoreboard

During the contest the scoreboard page will have real-time standings, except during the last hour when the scoreboard may be frozen.