
39th Annual UCF High School Programming Tournament
This year's tournament will be held on Monday, March 17, 2025! Registration is now open.
Advisors, if you are interested in having your team(s) compete at our tournament, please visit the Registration Page, or contact Dr. Ali Orooji by phone at 407-823-5660 or by our contact form. Students, if you are interested in competing, please discuss this with your high school team advisor (a teacher or other responsible adult representing the school) and show him/her this web site. We welcome as many teams for which we have space!
Format

Each participating school is represented by one or more teams of up to three students each. Teams are given ten or more programming problems to solve within four hours. The team solving the most problems wins. Ties are broken based primarily on the amount of time taken to solve the problems. (See Rules.) Teams have the option of using C/C++, Java and/or Python on PCs. Although it is necessary that each student be familiar with either C, C++, Java, or Python, the emphasis of the contest is on problem solving rather than on the specific details of the language. An orientation session on the day of the contest will allow teams to become familiar with the contest systems.
Contest Programming Environment
The competition will use up to six UCF computer labs, and team workstations in each lab will be have the environment installed. The environment will be pre-configured with language support for all of the contest languages, including simple compile/run functionality.
This year we will provide Visual Studio Code as the only programming environment. It will be configured for the following:
- C/C++ (GCC 11.2.0 or later)
- Java (OpenJDK 16.0.1 or later)
- Python (3.7.5 or later) Note: Python 2 will not be supported
Note: The language versions here are likely to be updated as the contest date approaches.
We encourage teams to download and install VS Code along with the programming language(s) of their choice, as soon as possible, on their personal machines and/or request it to be installed on classroom computers at their schools, so that they can gain familiarity with coding in this environment. Note that language support is provided through VS Code extensions, and that appropriate C/C++ language support on Windows may require installing additional software beyond just the compiler.
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Prizes
The top five teams will be awarded trophies, and hardware prizes. In addition, each participating team member and advisor will receive a limited edition, commemorative T-shirt!
Registration and Payment
Our system is a two-step process again this year. The team advisor (a teacher or other responsible adult representing the school) should first register your school's team(s) on this site using the online Registration link.
Once you complete team registration, please go to https://ucfhspt2025.eventbrite.com to pay the registration fee by credit card. The registration fee is $75 per team (not per school) and there is an Eventbrite fee for each team's "ticket" so the total should be about $81.88 per team. We no longer accept checks.
Registration closes on February 1, 2025. Payment is due by February 8, 2025.