[CM] Olympiad Track

Course Description

This program is designed to teach students fundamental problem-solving skills for the USACO (USA Coding Olympiad) competition, focusing on critical topics such as complete search, sorting, and sets, as well as graph algorithms. Through practice with previous test problems, students will develop their abilities to solve problems efficiently. By the end of the program, students will be well-equipped to participate in and excel at the USACO competition.

Course Prerequisite

Rising 8th and up
Programming skills - completion of CS23 (Data Structure) or AP CS A (or passing the equivalent diagnostic test)

Course Outcomes

Foundation for various coding competitions
Foundation for technical interviews for internship and job hunting

Course Schedule

Session	[CS51] USACO Foundation	[CS52] USACO Bronze
1	Introduction to USACO and setting up the programming environment	Greedy algorithms
2	Introduction to Data Structures	Greedy algorithms
3	Simulation, Geometry	Graph algorithms
4	Simulation, Geometry	Graph algorithms
5	Complete search algorithms	Practice problems and review
6	Complete search algorithms	Practice problems and review
7	Sorting and searching algorithms	Practice problems and review
8	Sorting and searching algorithms	Practice problems and review

USA Coding Olympiad (USACO)

Rules

For detailed information, please check the USACO official website (http://www.usaco.org).
Time limit: 4 hours (no interruption is allowed once it is started)
3-4 questions per contest
A total of 4 opportunities, and you can participate once a month. (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Contest)
Contestants scoring particularly highly will be automatically promoted to the next division while a contest is running; others will need to wait until results are announced at the end of the contest to see if they meet the (contest-dependent) cutoff for promotion.

Divisions

Bronze requires concepts in objects and basic algorithms such as sorting and binary search.
Silver requires essential problem-solving techniques such as recursive search and greedy algorithms.