The USACO coursein America stands for the USA Computing Olympiad. Students in the US are eligible to compete in a series of science and math Olympiads that test various topics well beyond the standard curriculum. There is the USBO for biology, the USAMO for mathematics, USNCO for chemistry, USACO for computer science, and USAPhO for physics. These contests aren’t used to recognize students for their achievements in these subjects but also to choose the members of Team USA in international competitions. There are four online contests per year in March, February, January and December where participants download the questions and submit solutions online.
Every contest comes with three problems that require a program to be written to calculate the correct answer for a collection of different test cases. The score for each of these problems is calculated based on the number of tests that the program correctly computes within the memory and time bounds allowed. Programming can be done in Pascal, C, C++, Java and Python.
Students start in bronze and are then promoted based on their scores. There are about 5000 pre-college students who take every contest but only about a fifth of the students achieve Platinum or Gold level.
Tips for preparing for USACO
There are different USACO training programs you can take online to prepare for USACO. However, you will need to complete Python Level 3, AP Computer Science A, Data & Algorithms Master in Java. Based on the recommendations from your instructor, students who demonstrate high independence with the basic data structures and fundamentals in Java or Python and who have the motivation to pursue challenging algorithmic topics are invited.
When choosing USACO classes online, you can go for 1:1 classes with a private instructor, using the USACO curriculum. The main emphasis is placed on data structures, algorithms and problem-solving skills needed at that level. You can be taught using a lot of practice problems from previous contests and the official USACO training portal. It takes at least one year to prepare for each USACO level.
USACO Bronze
Learners who start the USACO bronze course should be very comfortable with loops, variables, lists, conditionals, functions, dictionaries and sets. The bulk of preparation for bronze adjusts to the format of the USACO style problems and learning how to solve and debug problems with greedy algorithm approaches or brute force.
Depending on the student, your teacher may spend time reading comprehension for time management and complex problems for test taking. USACO bronze course is offered in Java or Python.
USACO silver
The USACO silver course covers graphs and trees, binary search, stacks, flood fill, prefix sums, depth-first search and so on. Additional emphasis is usually placed on memory and time complexity analysis to ensure that the programs run within the memory and time bounds for each test case. The USACO Silver course is typically offered in C++ or Java.
USACO gold
This USACO coursein America covers shortest path algorithms, dynamic programming, disjoint set, shortest path algorithms, string algorithms, and geometric algorithms. The USACO gold course is offered in C++ or Java.
