USACO Students Circle

Overview

 USACO is one of the most challenging pre-college Computer Science Exams/Contests. The USACO holds about five web-based contests during the academic year. Click here to view more details on the timing and exams. 

 USACO contests are designed to challenge even the very best students, and it can take a good deal of hard work and passion in problem-solvings with programming to excel at them.

There are four levels:  Bronze,  Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Doing well in USACO online contests serves as a good indicator of algorithmic thinking and problem-solving skills.

 USACO contests take place as an online exam with a list of open challenges for computer science students every year,  with one contest per month from December to April.  Visit USACO's official site for details such as the entrance to the IOI.   Students can sign up for any of the exams and are encouraged to take as many as you can every year continuously.

 Again, this is an online exam, not a team-based like most other competitions. Students take the exams online on their own. The majority of our Algorithms in C/C++ Level II students with high proficiency advanced to Silver. Many of them also advanced to Gold after they reached Level III with high proficiency.

This is NOT a class, but a discussion group. In order to be productive, students MUST possess passion in algorithmic programming, and be self-motivated (e.g. not being told by parents, not rushing thru to get problems complete without demanding themselves for the best result, etc. ) Thus, inquiry must be received from the students.

Do note: if you do not like error-checking, trouble-shooting or being inquisitive "what-ifs", or do not like to revise your work as sugggested by the instructor, etc., this is not for you.

Prerequisites:

• Develop a good knowledge of data structures like lists, trees, and graphs. Complete Algorithms in C/C++ - II.
• MUST love problem solving and open discussion;
• MUST LOVE PROGRAMMING and algorithmic thinking;
• MUST be willing to work through algorithmic problems on his/her own time, and collaboratively in the meetings!

If the student has met the prerequisites, please have the student  emailing us to acquire for the meeting link.

What if my child has never started with Algorithms in C/C++?

Please go here to view details.

This is a Students-Driven group which meet once a week to work on USACO problems collaboratively. The meetings are at no cost to SR students. Discussions are led by one of our advanced students. This is NOT a class.

To Be Determined - for Winter of 2023

Meetings used to take place on Fridays - from 4:30 to 6 PM.

At the meeting, members will be provided discord channel link for any extended interesting discussion, sharing and communication regarding algorithmic programming topics.

Advanced to Platnum Division

Advanced to Gold Division

Advanced to Silver Division

There is no shortcut to this. BEST PRACTICE...

• Basic rule of thumb - to understand and analyze, NOT by rote memorization and syntax recall.
• There is NO substitue of practices. Go thru their past exams. Be inquisitive. Try things out!
• The more practice you get, and the better programmer you become.
• One must love problem-solving with programming. That requires one's intrinsic love of being inquisitive.
• One must love debugging, trouble-shooting and often being inquisitive, understanding and shooting for the best result.
• When it comes to learning algorithms - put yourself in analysis mode and implement them.
• Don't settle with basic given test cases. Think about exceptions - normal to worst cases. List test cases and test your code.
• Work on the problems sets in the USACO.org site. Understanding the problem, practice, submitting and re-submitting solutions until you get the best result.

2021-Fall to Current: Group leader: Arjun Subramanian

Arjun attended Storming Robots' CS Track program since his 5th grade, and started to lead SR's USACO Students Circle since his 8th grade. He possesses a deep passion for problem-solving with programming. He has advanced to the USACO Gold division at 8th grade. He has broadened his CS knowledge by self-studying thru Coursera in various topics, including Princeton’s Algorithms (Part 1 and 2), Managing Big Data with MySQL, and Algorithms Theory and Machines. He has also taught Python since the 2021 Summer and continues throughout the school year. Some of his other interests include skiing, squash, and play chess. Here is his GitHub.

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2021-Spring: Group leader- Brian Gan.

Brian, a USACO Gold level achiever at 11th grade, has been at SR as both computer science and robotics student since he was in early middle school. He has a deep passion in problem solvings. Brian took the initiative to start this group and hope to further increase the interest and strength in algorithmic programming. He was admitted to Purdue University- Class of 2025 as CE major.