The High School Programming Contest (HSPC) provides high school students with opportunities to interact with students from other high school s and to sharpen and demonstrate their problem-solving, programming, and teamwork skills.  The contest provides a platform for industry, and academia to encourage and focus public attention on the next generation of computing professionals as they pursue excellence.

Solutions to problems submitted for judging are called runs. Each run is judged as accepted or rejected by a judge, and the team is notified of the results.

Notification of accepted runs may be suspended at an appropriate time to keep the final results secret. A general announcement to that effect will be made during the contest. Notification of rejected runs will continue until the end of the contest.

A contestant may submit a claim of ambiguity or error in a problem statement by submitting a clarification request to a judge. If the judges agree that an ambiguity or error exists, a clarification will be issued to all contestants.

Contestants are not to converse with anyone except members of their team and personnel designated by the regional contest director. Systems support staff may advise contestants on system-related problems such as explaining system error messages.

A team may be disqualified by the regional contest director for any activity that jeopardizes the contest such as dislodging extension cords, unauthorized modification of contest materials, or distracting behavior.

At least five problems will be posed. So far as possible, problems will avoid dependence on detailed knowledge of a particular applications area or particular contest language.

A problem is solved when it is accepted by the judges.  The judges are solely responsible for accepting or rejecting submitted runs. In consultation with the judges, the Contest Director determines the winners of the contest. The contest director and judges are empowered to adjust for or adjudicate unforeseen events and conditions. Their decisions are final.

Teams are ranked according to the most problems solved. For the purposes of awards, teams who solve the same number of problems are ranked by least total time. The total time is the sum of the time consumed for each problem solved. The time consumed for a solved problem is the time elapsed from the beginning of the contest to the submittal of the accepted run plus 10 penalty minutes for every rejected run for that problem regardless of submittal time. There is no time consumed for a problem that is not solved.

It is the responsibility of the Contest Director to specify any additional tie-breakers. Tie-breaker policies must be announced to contestants before the contest begins.

The programming languages of the contest will include C/C++, Java and Visual Basic. Students will be able to use the Visual .net envirnoment as well as Dev C++ for editing programs.

Each team will use a single workstation running windows XP which is not connected to the internet. The contest director is responsible for determining that teams have reasonably equivalent computing resources.

Each team may bring any printed (non-electronic) materials to the contest. Floppy disks, zip disks, usb drives and CDs are all prohibited. Teams are encouraged to bring paper and pencils and programming language manuals.

Sample Problems:

• Sample_Problem_1.pdf (Coin Change)
  
• Sample_Problem_2.pdf (Double Letters)