Student registration
Coach registration
BYU High School Programming Contest 2025
Date and Location
Computing Sciences outreach program for high school students by Berkeley Lab is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Details
  • Prizes: Prizes will awarded on the following basis:
    • 1st – 5th Place Teams – Prizes/Gift Cards
    • 10+ additional prizes will be given to randomly selected participants
  • Eligibility: Any high school student residing in the state of Utah may participate.
  • Registration: Registration must be completed by both students (at this link) and teachers/coaches (at this link).
    • Participants and teachers must complete registration by midnight on Wednesday, April 9th, 2025.
  • Computer Systems: Teams of up to 3 students will need to provide their own laptop (just 1) with which they will access the contest platform via the internet.
  • Contest Platform: The contest will be conducted on Kattis. The Kattis website can be accessed by most common operating systems (including Linux, MacOS and Windows) and supports common languages (including but not limited to Java, Python3 and C++).

    Teams are encouraged to practice on the Kattis platform ahead of the contest to be familiar with how it works. In particular, a solution program must read test cases from stdin. This is likely to be a new approach for many students, so we will provide some practice progems and accompanying templates and solutions two weeks before the contest.
  • Spectators: Family and friends are invited to watch through the contest leaderboard. The leaderboard will be published closer to the contest date.
Schedule
8:00 – 8:50 am
Registration (outside WSC Varsity Theater)
9:00 am – 9:20 am
Opening Ceremony (WSC Varsity Theater)
9:25 – 9:50 am
Setup/Testing (WSC Garden Court)
10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Actual Programming Contest (WSC Garden Court)
1:00 – 1:45 pm
Lunch
2:00 – 2:30 pm
Results and Awards Ceremony (WSC Varsity Theater)
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
  • Q: What time should teams arrive on campus and where exactly is check-in?
    A: Teams need to be checked in by 8:50am. Please arrive by 8:30 or 8:40am, if possible. The check-in is near the Varsity Theater inside the Wilkinson Student Center on BYU campus. It's located right next door to the Jamba Juice, ask anyone in the building they should be able to point you there (it's one level above the ground if you're coming in from the traffic circle (see below)).
  • Q: How does transportation and parking work for this event?
    A: If you have a bus, the bus can drop you and your students off at the traffic circle near the Wilkinson Student Center and the bus can then park in the parking lot east of the BYU stadium.
  • Q: Is there a recommended location for students, chaperones, and coaches to meet upon arrival?
    A: Either by the traffic circle or at the registration desk outside the Varsity Theater (near the Jamba Juice).
  • Q: What platform will be used for the contest?
    A: While HackerRank has been used for our recent contests (HSPC23 and HSPC24), we will be using Kattis as a platform this year. We will provide practice contests on Kattis during the two weeks prior to the HSPC 2025 contest.
    One key difference is that Kattis does not have an integrated IDE. If the laptop you bring does not already have an installed editor such as VS Code, IntelliJ, or PyCharm, we recommend an online IDE such as OneCompilera> or Ideone.
  • Q: What kind of computers or devices will be provided, or do students need to bring their own?
    A: Each team of 1-3 students will need its own laptop that can be connected to wifi via the eduroam network. It could be a student's laptop or one from your school.
  • Q: What programming languages and IDEs will be available/allowed? Will any template code be provided?
    A: Whatever IDE (installed or web-based) the students wish to use should be okay. The languages that will be officially supported are C++, Java, and Python. Others *may* be available, but those 3 are the only ones we will have tested solutions and their timing for.
    We will provide templates for each of the contest problems that reads the problem's input and helps produce the output. Templates will only be provided in C++, Java and Python.
  • Q: Will students be allowed to bring personal notes, printed code, or reference sheets?
    A: Yes, students can bring whatever they want in terms of printed material. They will not be allowed to use any electronic resources.
  • Q: How is the competition scored? Is it based on the number of problems solved or time-based?
    A: The competition will be scored using ICPC scoring -- teams are ranked by number of problems solved with ties broken by time penalty. Time penalty is the sum of the times for all solved problems *plus* a 20-minute penalty for each incorrect (wrong answer, time limit exceeded, etc) submission on those problems. For example, suppose that Team 1 solved 2 problems, the first 17 minutes into the contest and the second 39 minutes into the contest (but with 2 incorrect submissions before the correct one). Team 1's penalty time would be 17 + 39 + 2*20 = 96 mins of penalty time. Team 2 solved two problems as well, the first at 21 minutes (with one incorrect submission) and the second at 47 minutes. Suppose Team 2 had 3 incorrect tries on a third problem. Team 2 would have 21 + 47 + 1*20 = 88 mins of penalty time. The incorrect tries on the third problem don't count *until* that problem is solved.
  • Q: Will students receive problem sets in printed form, digitally, or both?
    A: Each student will receive a printed copy of the problem set. They will also be available digitally on the single laptop that each team (of 1-3 students) is using.
Additional Questions? Email info@byuhspc.org
Sponsors / Acknowledgements
If you would like to sponser this event, please contact info@byuhspc.org