What is ICPC? #
The International Collegiate Programming Contest is an algorithmic programming contest for college students. Teams of three, representing their university, … Quite simply, it is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world.
Reference: icpc global website
Path to world finals #
The selection happens via 4 different contests
- Common Online Qualifier
- Onsite Regionals
- Asia West Finals
- ICPC World Finals
Common Online Qualifier #
A common online qualifier consisting of ~6 problems of ~3 hours will be held for all the regionals.
Onsite Regionals #
An onsite regional consisting of ~10-12 problems in ~5 hours. You can only apply to 2 regionals. Selection for each regional’s onsite will be based on the ranklist of the common online qualifier.
You can find list of all regionals, their websites and all important dates. here
Asia West Finals #
Few Top teams from each regional will qualify for the Asia West Finals.
ICPC World Finals #
Winner of each regional and top few teams from Asia West Finals will qualify for ICPC World Finals. ~130 teams from across the world qualifies for it. Atmax one team from each college is allowed.
Eligibility criteria #
Basic criterias:
- All team members must be enrolled in the same degree-granting institution of higher education, herein called the “team institution.”
- A student should be born in 2001 or later, or should have started studying in college after 2020.
- A student may compete only on teams with the same team institution during a contest year.
- A student who has competed in two ICPC World Finals is NOT eligible to compete in ICPC Regionals with few exceptions.
- A student who has competed in qualifying regional contests during five different contest years is NOT eligible to compete with few exceptions.
For exhaustive set of criterias, please refer ICPC Global website here and Eligibility Decision Tree
Registration procedure #
- Each member of the team should create an account at this site: https://icpc.global/register (be careful to fill all details carefully and correctly, or your team registration might not be accepted at the baylor site).
- Do not create a team yourself, just create an account and validate it by logging in once.
- Contact any professor (preferably of the CSE Dept). Ask him to act as your coach and create a team for you.
- They will create team by adding your teammates.
- You get the mail regarding team formation.
- After getting a mail. You need to pay the requisite fees to the regional site that was selected by you.
- For fee payment, please go to the registration link provided for the specific site, here on https://wc.indiaicpc.in/
- This has to be done after you get team confirmation mail. You have to make payment by visiting the official site of the regionals you choose. Make this payment before the last date as mentioned in the regionals site.
Selection procedure #
From online to regionals #
None of the regionals have declared it so far. Some of the sample selection criterias can be found here.
- 2018 Kanpur regionals
- 2018 Amritapuri regionals (Click on skip to content)
These are just samples to help understand how selections happens. This year’s exact criteria can be very different from these.
Different regionals have different selection criterias. Some of the most popular ones are:
- Select first team from each college
- Select top X teams
- Hybrid of above 2, Select top X teams, and then first team from each college
- Often there is a cap on maximum no of teams from a single college
FAQ: My rating is X, do I have changes to qualify for regionals? #
In my opinion, irrespective of what your rating it, you should register and participate in ICPC. As mentioned, a lot of dynamics play out here, your relative rank in college, your overrall rank in India etc etc.
You can check following blogs to see what rating different people had when they qualified for regionals.
Teams qualifying for Indian ICPC Regionals, 2022
Indian ICPC Regionals, 2022 — 2023
Indian ICPC Regionals, 2023 — 2024
Teams qualified for ICPC Asia West Continent Championship 2024
Regionals to Asia West Finals #
It has been declared, please refer Asia West website
Asia West Championship to ICPC World Finals #
The general selection criteria is -
- Winners of ICPC regionals are selected directly
- Then top X teams from Asia West Finals are selected
List of selected teams is declared on ICPC Asia Blog
How to prepare #
You can find my general advise on how to get better at competitive programming on my discord server. Please refer #roadmap-to-red-in-2-mins channel.
The best way to learn how to do X is to try to do X.
You can find list of previous year contest, their editorial and discussion links here.