Notes

As some of you may know, teams from our department have been participating in various competitive programming contests in the previous years, most notable of which is ACM-ICPC. In an effort to achieve better results in such contests, we are planning to start training rather timely this year. As part of that effort, those of you who are interested in online programming contests are encouraged to regularly participate in competitions we are going to announce, so that we can observe your performance, and form competitive programming teams.

With the help of METU ACM Student Chapter and our faculty, we are planning to train these students for programming competitions in the upcoming semester. The department is planning to select the teams participating in these events, based on their combined performance in the contests, and their participation in the training sessions.

We did conduct a similar process for team selection last year, but have updated some of the criteria for this year. So, even if you feel familiar with the guidelines, go through them once more to note the changes.

Below are the tentative guidelines the department will follow to choose the participants that are going to represent our university in ICPC, and in any other programming competition we may participate in next year.

- Participants' overall performances in the individual contests are going to be made available online, as a scoreboard, and the scoreboard is going to be updated regularly. (see https://tinyurl.com/metuicpcscoreboard for the scoreboard)

- The priority of a team in representing our department will be estimated by summing up the individual performances of the team members, and comparing that to the priorities of the other teams.

- Codeforces will be the platform on which the contests will be held. Participants must create an account on Codeforces and join the METU Codeforces group ( https://tinyurl.com/codeforcesmetu ) so that their participation can be added to the scoreboard mentioned above.

- Time & date information of the contests will be announced on the newsgroup as early as possible, by either myself or someone from METU ACM Student Chapter.

- The department is not planning to form the teams, but participants are advised to form their teams as soon as possible. When faced with increasing amount coursework, individual progress of those interested seem to atrophy in time. We find that training as a team is helpful to prevent that stagnancy.

- Interested students are expected to work on their skills on their own time, and not just participate in the team selection contests. As a result, a new criteria is added to this year's team selection process: any team must have at least one member with a rating higher than 1900 in Codeforces platform.

- In the Spring semester, the department or the ACM Chapter may hold onsite contests and upsolving sessions. Lack of meaningful participation to those onsite contests (and the upsolving sessions) may be considered as a disqualifying factor.

- The contests are to be entered individually. Any team effort in the individual contests is considered grounds for disqualification from the team selection process.

- The department is planning to fund the teams participating to ICPC this year. And, in an effort to use limited funds at hand wisely, besides the criteria mentioned above, the department reserves its right to disqualify individuals or teams from participating to ICPC, based on their participation and efforts (or lack thereof) in the overall training process.