The Harvard Computing Contest Club (formerly known as the Harvard ACM Team) sends at least two teams of 3 undergraduates every year to compete in an ACM Northeastern Preliminary Contest. The team that does best, if it does well enough, goes on to complete in the ACM Northeastern Regional Contest, and if that team does well enough there, it goes on to the ACM World Finals (held in 2007 in Tokyo, Japan, in 2008 at Banff Springs, Alberta, Canada, in 2009 in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2010 in Harbin, China, in 2011 in Orlando, Florida (it was going to be held in Sharm el-Shiekh, Egypt, but was moved due to the Arab Spring), in 2012 in Warsaw, Poland, and in 2013 will be in St. Petersburg, Russia.

In the past Harvard has sent a team to the World Finals about one out of every three or four years. However, competition has become much more difficult in recent years and it is quite an accomplishment for a Harvard team to get to World Finals.

In order to get to World Finals a team should fairly quickly know how to solve at least 6 of the 11-12 problems on a typical World Finals contest. See the World Finals Past Problem Sets.

Generally the better Harvard teams can solve a problem if they can write good pseudo-code for a problem; where in this case the pseudo-code need only contain a precise specification of the data structures and a very rough outline of any intricate parts of the algorithm. So another way of stating the idea in the last paragraph is to say that in order to get to World Finals a team should be able to fairly quickly produce such pseudo-code for at least 6 of the 11-12 problems on a typical World Finals. You can test your pseudo-code by using it to write code that you submit to the ACM OnLine Judge which will automatically test your code against the judge's input/output that was used during the World Finals.

Therefore reading World Finals problems and reducing them to such pseudo-code is excellent practice.

HC3 Selection Contest Practice Facility
BOSPRE Preliminary Contest Practice Facility

Announcement ... Schedule ... Members ... Team Selection ... Photos ... Links

Results from recent years:

• Harvard got 7 out of 12 problems in the 2012 World Finals, placing 7th overall and 1st among North American teams, winning silver medals and $3,000.
• Harvard got 8 out of 8 problems and took 2nd, 10 minutes behind MIT, in the 2011 regionals at RIT, and thereby qualified for World Finals.
• Harvard 1 got 6 out of 8 problems and took 3rd in the 2011 BOSPRE preliminary, behind two MIT teams. Harvard 2 got 5 problems and took 4th.
• Harvard got 2 out of 8 problems and took 2nd behind MIT in the 2010 regionals at RIT, but failed to qualify for World Finals.
• Harvard got 5 out of 7 problems and took 1st in the 2010 BOSPRE preliminary (beating MIT by a hair).
• Harvard got 7 out of 8 problems and took 3rd in the 2009 regionals at RIT.
• Harvard Caffeinated got 5 out of 6 problems and took 1st in the 2009 BOSPRE preliminary. Harvard 2 got 4 problems and took 2nd place. Harvard Hat of No Return and Square Root of Harvard 3 each got 3 problems and took 5th and 6th place.
• Harvard got 4 problems and took 5th in the 2008 regionals at RIT.
• Harvard 1 got all 7 problems and took 1st in the 2008 preliminary round at WNEC to advance to the 2008 regionals at RIT, while Harvard 2 got 5 problems and took 2nd.
• Harvard 1 got 4 problems and placed 3rd, behind MIT and Brown, at the 2007 regionals at RIT.
• Harvard 1 and Harvard 2 each solved 2 problems at the 2007 preliminary round at WNEC. Harvard 1, with the better time of the two teams, won 4th place on time, behind two MIT teams and McGill, and advanced to the regionals.
• Harvard 10 solved 1 problem and got honorable mention at the 2007 World Finals in Tokyo, Japan.
• Harvard 10 got 4 problems and placed 2nd, behind MIT, at the 2006 regionals at RIT, and thereby won the right to go to the 2007 World Finals.
• Harvard 10 got all 7 problems to take first place, beating out Harvard 1 and the Southern Connecticut Fighting Owls, who each got 6 problems, in the 2006 preliminary round at WNEC. Harvard 10 (that's binary) was composed of the students who placed 4th, 5th, and 7th in the Harvard Fall Selection Contest, whereas Harvard 1 was composed of students who placed 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
• Harvard Ad Hoc got 4 problems and placed 3rd, behind MIT and Binghamton University, at the 2005 regionals at RIT.
• Harvard Ad Hoc got 6 problems and Harvard SQrT got 5 problems to place 2nd and 3rd behind MIT in the 2005 preliminary round at WNEC.
• Harvard 124 got three problems and placed 3rd in the 2004 regionals, behind MIT and University of New Brunswick.
• In the 2004 preliminary round at WNEC, Harvard 124, composed of students who placed 5th, 7th, and 8th in the Harvard Selection Contest, beat out by less than 2 minutes Harvard .*, composed of students who placed 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in the Selection Contest. Both teams got 6 problems.
• Harvard Lambda solved 5 problems and placed 9th in the 2004 World Finals at Prague, Czech Republic, winning Bronze Medals and $1,000.
• Harvard Lambda solved 5 problems and placed 2nd to MIT at the 2003 regionals.
• Harvard Lambda solved 7 problems and placed 2nd to MIT at the 2003 preliminaries. Harvard Mu solved 3 problems and placed 5th.
• Harvard solved 4 problems and placed 30th at the 2003 World Finals.
• Harvard solved 4 of 8 problems and placed 1st at the 2002 regionals, beating MIT again, and advancing to the 2003 World Finals.
• Harvard solved all 7 problems and placed 1st at the 2002 preliminaries, beating MIT, and advancing to the 2002 Regionals in Rochester, NY.
• Harvard solved 2 problems and did not place at the 2001 regionals in Westfield, MA.
• Harvard solved 5 problems and placed 2nd at the 2001 preliminaries, and advanced to the 2001 Regionals in Westfield, MA.
• Harvard solved 5 problems and placed 10th at the 2001 World Finals at Vancouver, Canada, earning each team member a $500 scholarship!
• Harvard solved 7 problems and placed 2nd at the 2000 regionals, and advanced to the 2001 World Finals in Vancouver, Canada.

Please send questions or comments to walton@seas.harvard.edu.

HC3 is an activity of the Harvard University Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and is not a `Harvard Student Organization'.