Rules

Eligibility

All matriculated CUNY undergraduates are eligible to enter.

Registration

Online registration is available here. Registration open until Wednesday, March 4^th, 2020

Contest Duration & Deadlines

The contest begins on-line at 9:00 A.M. on Monday, February 24, 2020 and ends after an in-person exam at 10 AM on Sunday, March 29, 2020. The contest is composed of two rounds. The first round will take place entirely online remain open for two weeks. The final round, which is by invitation only will consist of an in-person exam.

Round 1

• Round 1 will open on Monday, February 24, 2020 at 9:00 A.M. Questions will be posted on the website. Registered participants will have until Sunday, March 8 at 11:59 P.M. to submit their responses for Round 1.

Round 2

• Round 2 will consist of a 120 minutes in-person exam to be held at Baruch College at 10:00 A.M. on Sunday, March 29, 2020. Students will be selected to take the exam based upon their performances in Rounds 1. Selected students will be notified one week in advance of the in-person exam by email. No make-up exam will be administered. All students must present their CUNY IDs to be allowed to sit for the exam.

Contest Submission Process

Answers for Rounds 1 must be submitted online.

Once logged into his/her account, a student will be able to upload individual answer files for each question in the current round. Only PDF file format will be accepted. If the student chooses to handwrite his/her answers, he/she must digitize their answers and save them as separate .pdf files and upload the files to your 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 their 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 upload; students should resubmit their solutions.

Grading

Solutions will be graded based upon several factors including mathematical correctness, supporting arguments, and clarity of presentation. Partial credit may be granted. Carefully written justifications are required for each problem solution. A correct answer without support will receive very little, if any, credit. Scratch work or formulas with no explanation should not be submitted. If a computer calculation is important or central to the solution, the algorithm that has programmed or the procedures employed must be described in some detail (in pseudo-code or otherwise). Source code or executables should not be submitted.

The levels of difficulty of the problems in each round varies; some of the questions are very challenging. You don't need to solve all in a given round to do well.

Point Scales

Rounds One will be graded out of twenty points.

Judging

A committee of faculty from Mathematics and Computer Science departments across CUNY is responsible for overseeing the scoring. Decisions of the committee are final.

Awards

Winners in the final round will get stipend awards ranging from $100 up to a top prize of $500. Winners must have SSN or ITIN in order to receive stipend awards.