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Comment by harryputtar | Hacker News Reader

I think as somebody wfo too as competed in ICPC albeit not at world finals, I just want to add an important caveat, getting to world finals has a lot to do where are you from, for example if you are from a historically tough university or place such as India, Belarus or China. It is exponentially harder since due to how ICPC works the rules make it a piece of cake if you are from an unnamed college in norther America but much harder if you are from an established IIT in India or from somewhere like university of Tokyo.

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> It ("getting to world finals") is exponentially harder since due to how ICPC works the rules make it a piece of cake if you are from an unnamed college in norther America but much harder if you are from an established IIT

Rephrased as I understood it in context, it says: "unnamed colleges in northern America has better chances at getting to WF than India, Belarus, or China".

Which is a surprising statement to me. At my time (2008-2012, followed it a few more years thereafter), the heavy hitters were from Belarus/Russia, China, and India to a smaller extent. I remember getting news that Shanghai Jiao Tong really dedicates time to training, almost like a sport. Petr Mitrichev is Russian and tourist (forgot his real name) is AFAIK Belarusian. At least Mitrichev coached in grassroots programs for IOI which then translated to ICPC performance. Maybe India wasn't as dominant but I believe they were at least a considerable contingent in the Asia-regional levels.

So it seemed to me the competition format favored these countries over US universities, which focused on research. Not to mention China and Russia loved hosting big ICPC events, if not the World Finals itself.

Do elaborate on your statement please. I am curious why you'd make that claim.

You can check out the rating of teams going to world finals in previous years.

https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/73791

https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/64909

The problem is that certain regions just have too many slots relative to their density of competition programmers.

For example in less competitive regions, a rating of around ~2100 gives you a decent shot at world finals.

But if you were in a region with a lot of other good schools, then even if you had a rating of 3000 you might not even be able to represent your own school, let alone your region. See MIT's result where their top 3 teams dominated their region but their school can still only send at most one team to world finals: https://nena20.kattis.com/standings

Isn't this how most international competition works? I'm most familiar with the olympics and this is exactly how it works there. People from uncompetitive countries for their sport have an "easier" time going to the olypmics.

lol my team even made to this stage here - https://nadc21.kattis.com/standings- and we did practically nothing, haha

it's Macalester btw

The idea is that the bar for getting there is much higher - if you're from China or "Northern Eurasia", you get to the finals only if you dedicate time to training and can defeat those "heavy hitters" since you have to compete with them for scarce slots long before the final, but if you come from an unnamed college in northern America, you have a chance to get to WF without being at that level.

Except there’s not much competitive programming bench strength in India (happy to link to ample evidence). Really facetious to compare it with China where the bench strength is real, and those thrown by the wayside could have otherwise killed it.

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