Regional ICPC

Pacific Northwest Regional ICPC

Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024 | De Anza College

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De Anza College will be hosting the prestigious Pacific Northwest Regional competition for the International Collegiate Programming Contest on Saturday, Nov. 16.

Contest Details, Schedule, Directions

The event was will be held in the Advanced Technology (AT) Center on the De Anza College campus at 21250 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino, 95014. 

• Free parking – Lot B
• Registration – AT 202, inside the AT building across from the campus police substation
• See the campus map

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Scroll down or click to learn more:

• Why is this such a big deal?
• Why is De Anza hosting this event?
• Why is this of interest to you?
• What else can you do besides competing?

Why is this such a big deal?

This is a prestigious annual event that is hosted across multiple sites simultaneously. The PacNW region will have four other sites besides NorCal (De Anza): Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Hawaii. There will be other regionals concurrently as well across other states. Our site will be the largest in all of PacNW and will bring the brightest programmers from most Bay Area and Sacramento region colleges to compete against each other – Stanford, UCB, UCD, UCSC, SJSU, SacState, Chico State, CSU Monterrey to name a few.

There will be two divisions in the Contest - Division 1 and 2. Winners of the Division 1 get to advance to the North America Championship to be held later in the Spring quarter. Division 2 is a practice division or stepping stone for Division 1 the following year.

Why is De Anza hosting this event?

For the past eight years, De Anza's Competitive Programming Club (CPC) has been participating in this contest against four-year colleges and universities. Our teams have been consistently earning a top 5 spot in Division 2 and our winners participated in Division 1 as members of their transfer schools. However, we did field good teams in Division 1 in 2021 and again in 2023 and the 2023 team advanced to the North America Championship round in Orlando to compete against the top 50 schools. We were the only two-year school ever invited and our team did quite well.

Plus, we competed against some of our own prior students who had transferred and showed them that their legacy at De Anza CPC is alive. Hosting this contest at De Anza allows us to increase its visibility among all our, as well as Foothill, students and hopefully motivate more you to consider participating during your study here.

Why is this of interest to you?

Think you are a good programmer or want to exponentially improve at programming? Sign up with the Competitive Programming Club at deanzacpc@gmail.com to participate in their practice sessions to find out. Then step up to compete against the best students in the entire Pacific Northwest to test your mettle as the contest will pose 13 challenging programming exercises to solve in 5 hours and that too with only limited hardcopy reference material. You will be required to solve them in teams of 3 programmers, so it will help improve your collaboration skills. Additionally, you will gain bragging rights which will help you in your transfer application as well as provide valuable experience towards solving the kinds of problems Bay Area companies ask during their interview process for programming internships and entry level jobs. Finally, we also hope your instructors may offer some form of extra credit to participate in the contest.

De Anza is allowed to sign up with 10 teams, i.e. 30 students, across both divisions as the host site. Foothill will be allowed another 6 of their own. However, if there is high interest in participating from both campuses, we can lobby for more spots. Participating in the practice sessions of the CPC is important to determine who all will participate and in which division as that club will send me the final list of participants to enroll. So sign up by sending an email to deanzacpc@gmail.com to get more information.

What else can you do besides competing?

Over 200 people are expected to come to De Anza campus on Saturday, Feb. 24, to participate in the contest. The 2023 site (CSU Chico) had nearly 40 teams contesting across the two divisions and we are hoping for even more given the centrality of our campus in the Bay Area and easy freeway access. So we will need a lot of student volunteers to help with various activities before and on the day of the event.

This will also be an opportunity for the volunteers to experience the event and determine for themselves if they would contest in the future. Also, we hope your instructors may offer some form of extra credit to volunteer. A link to the signup sheet will be circulated in the coming weeks.

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Donate Now to Support This Event

To make this event successful, we need to raise $6,000 for materials, prizes and food – as over 200 people will attend including contestants, coaches, contest organizers and student volunteers. We are coordinating with the Foothill-De Anza Foundation to raise these funds online as they are already set up for that and any donations will be tax deductible due to the Foundation’s nonprofit status.

Please consider donating whatever amount you can, as every little bit helps – not just to make the event a success but to showcase the fact the De Anza students can compete with the best from Bay Area’s top schools. Donating through the Foundation also allows for corporate matching to potentially double your donations.

All donations over $500 will be acknowledged in the contest website and all briefings during the event. Donations over $2,000 will also have their logos printed on contest T-shirts as well as be invited to witness the event and interact with the participants.