We encourage you to work in teams of three, but you may compete individually or in a team of two.
There will be two divisions: Division 1 is intended for people with some problem-solving experience and Division 2 is intended for people with less problem-solving experience.
Division 1 Eligibility Criteria
We will adopt the same cutoffs as the official ICPC. See here for their eligbility flowchart.
Anyone who is "eligible" (i.e. passes the flowchart) can register for Division 1: all team members must qualify. Exception: Grade school students are always eligible for Div 1.
If you fail the criteria but only by "a bit",
you can email the contest organizer (Zac Friggstad) to ask for an exception. For example, perhaps your studies were delayed or you have spent a long time in internships.
Division 2 Eligibility Criteria
The eligibility criteria has been drastically simplified. Simply put, to be eligible for Div 2 all team members must pass the basic eligibility criteria for Div 1 and no team member should have won any prize money in a previous UAPC/ACPC.
For questions about eligibility, email the contest organizer (Zac Friggstad).
In each division, the winning team is the one that solves the most problems. Ties are broken by penalty points.
Ranking
A problem is considered solved if one of your team's submissions for that problem receives a judgement of
Accepted from the judging platform. Participants that are not familiar with the judging platform
are strongly encouraged to try a few practice problems themselves to understand how judgements are given, see the "Other Information" box for details.
There is no partial credit, any judgement apart from Accepted means the problem is not yet solved by your team.
You may resubmit as many times as you would like.
The team that solves the most problems wins. Ties are broken by the team with the least penalty points.
Penalties points are calculated as follows. For each problem that is accepted, you receive M + 20*W penalty points
where M is the number of minutes from the start of the contest before your first Accepted verdict for this problem
and W is the number of incorrect submissions for this problem before your first Accepted verdict.
See the 2023 Division 2 scoreboard for an example of how ranking is done.
More details about scoring can be found here.
Scoreboard Freezing
The scoreboard typically "freezes" when there is 1 hour remaining in the contest. You are able to see the verdicts for your own submissions but the scoreboard will not update
apart from showing a submission count from other teams during the final hour (i.e. you will not know if it was accepted or not).
The scoreboard will be unfrozen after the contest to reveal the final rankings. The contest administrators reserve the right
to change the timing of when the scoreboard freezes, but this is rare.