Come join SLU's team!!!!

The 2008/2009 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest


Key Dates

           Organizational Meeting         Tuesday, September 2   3:45pm         Ritter 121
Regional Competition Saturday, November 1   (all day)         Webster University
World Finals (?) 18-22 April 2009 Stockholm, Sweden


Each year the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) holds an international programming contest for college students. Students work in teams of three to solve as many problems as possible in a five-hour time period. The available programming languages for the contest are C++ and Java.

Last year's contest involved 6787 teams from 83 countries, competing at 213 different regional sites. The top 100 teams in the world traveled to Banff for the world finals. Here are the problems from those finals. If you want to try these, or to try problems from past regionals, you may submit code online at the ICPC Live Archive and get immediate feedback.

Saint Louis University can send six students (two teams of three) to the regional competition. We'd like you to be one of them.

Interested students should come attend an organizational meeting at 3:45pm on Tuesday, September 2, 2008 in Ritter 121.


There is also an opportunity to receive university credit for those interested in participating in the contest. This semester, our department is offering a Special Topics course titled Computational Problem Solving (CSCI 293). This course will serve to prepare students for the types of problems seen on the contest. (students are also welcome to participate without registering for this course).

The course is a 1-credit course using the Pass/No Pass grading option. Given the nature of the typical problems, participating students should generally have completed coursework through the level of CSCI 180 (Data Structures) or equivalent. The regular meeting time for the course will be decided at the organizational meeting.


Questions? Contact Michael Goldwasser
Michael Goldwasser
CSCI 293, Fall 2008
Last modified: Thursday, 25 September 2008