Rules

Eligibility

All matriculated CUNY undergraduates are eligible to enter.

Registration

Online registration is available here.

Contest Duration & Deadlines

The contest begins online at 9:00 A.M. on Sunday, January 1, 2012 and ends at 2:00 P.M. on Sunday, April 22, 2012 with an in-person exam. The contest will consist of four rounds. The first three rounds will take place entirely online and run for three months, with each round remaining open an entire month. The fourth and final round will consist of an in-person exam.

Round 1 - 3

• Round 1 will open on Sunday, January 1, 2012 at 9:00 A.M. Six questions will be posted. Registered participants will have until Tuesday, January 31 at 11:59 P.M. to submit their responses for Round 1.
• Round 2 will open on Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 9:00 A.M. Six questions will be posted. Registered participants will have until Wednesday, February 29 at 11:59 P.M. to submit their responses for Round 2.
• Round 3 will open on Thursday, March 1, 2012 at 9:00 A.M. Six questions will be posted. Registered participants will have until Saturday, March 31 at 11:59 P.M. to submit their responses for Round 3.

Round 4

• Round 4 will consist of a 3-hour in-person exam to be held at Baruch College at 10:00 A.M. on Sunday, April 22, 2012. Students will be selected to take the exam based upon their performances in Rounds 1 - 3. Selected students will be notified one week in advance of the in-person exam by email. No make-up exam will be administered. The registration status of all finalists will be validated prior to the final exam and all students must present their CUNY IDs to be allowed to sit for the exam.

Contest Submission Process

Answers for Rounds 1 - 3 can be submitted in one of three ways:

• 1. Online (the preferred method). Once logged into his/her account, a student will be able to upload individual answer files for each question in the current round. Three file formats will be accepted: .doc, .pdf, .jpg. Please note: Users of Microsoft Word 2007 should save their documents as Word Documents with a .doc extension, not as Word 2007 Documents (the default) with a .docx extension. If the student chooses to handwrite his/her answers, he/she must digitize the answers (i.e., scan it, take a digital photo), save the files in one of the approved formats, and upload the files to the student’s My Challenge page.
  Students may resubmit answers as many times as needed, but the last submission will always override the previous submission. Each answer file submitted should include the student's name and Challenge User ID, which was contained in the confirmation email sent at the point of registration. Students are encouraged to use the solution sheet template. Upon successful upload of each answer file, a record of the filename and time of upload will appear on the student's My Challenge page. If there is no record of the uploaded file on the My Challenge page, there was a problem during the submission process. Please upload the file again.
• 2. U.S. Postal Service. Answers may be sent via the U.S. Postal Service. Submissions should be on the solution sheet template. Please fill out all the fields at the top of the page. Note that the Challenge User ID was contained in the confirmation email sent at the point of registration. Submissions should be on only one side of the paper and pages should be stapled together in the order of the questions. Submissions must be postmarked by the deadline (5:00 A.M. on the Monday of the round, as explained above) and sent to:
  
  
  CUNY Graduate Center
  365 Fifth Avenue
  Computer Science Department, Room 4319
  Attn: CUNY Math Challenge
  New York, NY 10016
• 3. In-Person. Answers may be dropped off at the CUNY Graduate Center on the Friday before the closeeach round (as explained above) between the hours of 1:30-3:30 P.M. Submissions should be on the solution sheet template and the fields at the top of the page should be completed. Note that the Challenge User ID was contained in the confirmation email sent at the point of registration. Submissions should be on only one side of the paper and pages should be stapled together in the order of the questions.

Under no circumstances will late submissions be accepted.

Grading

Solutions will be graded based upon several factors including mathematical correctness, supporting arguments, and clarity of presentation. Partial credit will be granted. Carefully written justifications are required for each problem. A correct answer without support will receive very little credit. Scratch work or formulas with no explanation should not be submitted. In the case of handwritten submissions, if the submission is illegible it will not be graded. If a computer calculation is important or central to the solution, the algorithm that is programmed must be described. Source code or executables should NOT be submitted.
The level of difficulty of the problems in each round varies—-some of the questions are very challenging. You don't need to solve all six or five in a given round to do well. Solving six questions correctly would be an extremely impressive feat!

Point Scales

Each question in Round 1-3 will be graded out of five points. Answers will be posted after the close of each round; scores will be posted approximately one week later. The student's total score for each round will be the sum of the points earned in the five highest scored questions, i.e., if a student chooses to answer all six questions, the lowest score will be dropped. Students can access their scores on their My Challenge page. At the close of Round 3, approximately 30 of the top students will be invited to Round 4 to sit for the in-person exam.

Judging

A committee of faculty from mathematics and computer science departments across CUNY is responsible for overseeing the scoring process. Decisions of the committee are final.

Awards

Cash prizes range from $500 up to a grand prize of $2,500, funded by the Academic Leadership Award received by Chancellor Goldstein from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.