There are two selection contests: the Programming Contest and the Theory Contest.
Every student who wants to be on a Harvard team MUST participate in good faith in either the Programming or Theory Selection Contest (or both).
If 2 or 3 students want to be on the same team, they must indicate this on the form described in (2).
Note that students deciding to be on the same team may interfere with the normal process of selecting the best possible team to represent Harvard at regionals. It is strongly recommended that students who want to be on the same team practice together before the team formation meeting (as described in (4)), to be to be sure they work well together in a contest situation and really want to be on the same team.
It is possible for just 2 students to declare they want to be on the same team, with the third team member to be added by the team formation procedure in (4) below.
A student who participates in either the programming or theory contest must fill out an information form and submit it at the beginning of the first contest they participate in. In addition to general information about the student (name, phone, e-mail address), this form states whether the student wants to be on a team with some other student, and whether the student is willing to go to regionals and world finals.
The information form is here.
It is OK if a student wants to participate in a selection contest but not be on any team. If a student wants to be on some team, the student must be willing to go to Regionals, and not back out after the team formation meeting described in (4) below.
If the student is not willing to go to the championship or world final rounds, the coach will avoid assigning the student to a team that might be the best Harvard team at Regionals, as this team may go to the championship and world finals.
If several students want to be on the same team, each of these must list all the team's members on their form, and to have effect these lists must agree.
Also see (5) below.
The theory contest is held a week before the programming contest and the `theory scoreboard' is mailed to all participants in either contest during the week before the programming contest. The theory contest will be scored by the coach or faculty advisor. See Theory Contest for details.
Team formation will be done by the coach in a meeting immediately after the programming contest. The theory and programming contest results will be announced at the beginning of the meeting.
The coach will normally start with the 2 students who perform best in the programming contest, and add either the 3rd best student in the programming contest or the 1st best in the theory contest. Other teams will be formed similarly from students not yet assigned to a team. If the last team is short some members, the students on the team may find students to fill out the last team. Also see (5) below.
However the coach will respect wishes of students expressed as in (2). A student present at this team formation meeting may change his/her wishes during the meeting AT OR BEFORE the time these wishes affect team formation.
Also, the coach may ask students for advice during this meeting, but may or may not take their advice. The coach may ask members of the last team, if it is short one or two of the required 3 members, to help find students who did not participate in the contests to fill out the team.
Each team MUST have at least one member who got at least one programming contest problem Completely Correct.
A student who got no programming contest problem Completely Correct and additionally did not get at least one theory problem mostly correct will NOT be invited to join a team.
The coach may need 1 student to help prepare the selection contest. If no qualified student who is not trying out can be found, the coach may grandfather one student who was a solid first in some previous year's selection programming contest. The grandfathered student will help prepare the contests, will of course not participate as a contestant, but will be treated in (4) as the student who finished first in the programming contest.
Please send questions or comments to hc3-coaches@g.harvard.edu.