Coding Olympiad

The programming olympiad occurs each year, and ISCT without fail has its senior computer science students participating in the annual event. One Year 12 student in particular, has achieved immense success through this.

Last year, while Year 11s had been on their trip in Namibia the annual olympiad occurred; however, that did not stop David from participating in the event. A special request was made for him to go through to Round 2  based on his results the previous year where he came 38th in the country in only Year 10! 

With only a week’s notice to prepare for Round 2, David managed to score 430 points out of the potential 500 to be gained, securing him a tied 3rd place in the country, moving him onto Round 3.

Round 3 is especially difficult to get into as only the top 15 people in the country get to participate, with David being one of the qualifiers sent off to Johannesburg to compete in early October of last year. Here he achieved 7th place, only missing out by 10 points to receive a bronze medal.

This did not stop David as he went on to participate in multiple training camps for programming between December and March. These camps involved a two day long competition online or at Wits University where participants were required to solve 3 difficult problems per day in only 5 hours. Congratulations to David for qualifying to be one of the four people chosen for the South African programming squad;  we wish you luck for your next endeavours!

-Hannah