News & Events

University of Rochester advances to the ACM/ICPC World Finals 2017 to be held in Rapid City, South Dakota, USA, 20-25 May 2017. ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is the oldest and most prestigious programming contest in the world.  Teams of three students compete against eight or more problems with a 5 hour deadline. This year 43,967 students participated in the preliminary and regional contests with only 132 teams advancing to the world finals.

URCS sent two teams to the Northeast North America sub-regional ACM competition held in October at SUNY Oswego. YellowJacket Yellow team, consisting of sophomores Jackson Abascal, Zachary Polansky and senior Daniel Rubery, took first place with YellowJacket Blue team (junior Joel Kottas and seniors Maria Janczak, Hassler Thurston) placing third. First and second place (RIT) teams then moved to the regional competition held a few weeks later.

Team members practiced regularly in preparation for the regional competition.  Most years, only two teams would move forward to World Finals after the regional competition.  At the 2015 World Finals, both MIT and Harvard did very well, and competition organizers agreed to allow three teams to move forward to world finals this year.  With that extra advantage, our team worked hard to move up in the rankings so that they could capture at least the third place spot and move forward. 

At the regional competition held at RIT on November 19, YellowJackets Yellow team placed 2nd in a field of sixteen teams in the final standings, solving five out of eight problems. The first placing team (MIT) solved all eight problems, the third placing team (Mount Allison) solved four problems, and the remaining teams solved at most three problems.To have reached the second position was ever better!  Meliora to our team!  We'll be cheering for you in May!