Hey Codeforces community,
The recent selections for the ICPC India Amritapuri Regionals just dropped, and the current selection algorithm feels increasingly broken for competitive programming as a sport.
In the preliminary round, we solved 6 problems (A-E and H) and finished with an overall rank of ~450. However, because we were College Rank 2 at our institute, we did not get selected for the regionals.
Meanwhile, teams with a global rank around ~3700 are advancing simply because they hold the College Rank 1 spot at their respective universities, often with only 1 or 2 solves.
It is incredibly frustrating to see top-500 teams get boxed out by 1-solve teams purely due to institutional diversity quotas. Guaranteeing spots to smaller colleges might help grassroots participation, but the current math heavily penalizes secondary teams at competitive colleges to the point where absolute merit is completely ignored.
I understand the underlying philosophy: ICPC wants to promote grassroots competitive programming across as many colleges as possible. Guaranteeing a slot to the top team from every college encourages participation and justifies registration fees for smaller institutions. But there has to be a limit to how heavily meritocracy is penalized in the name of ecosystem growth.
Is this really the best way to foster elite competitive programming?
Setting a minimum benchmark like solving at least 'X' number of questions, makes a lot of sense if you want to ensure a baseline level of competency for regional qualifiers
How many team can participate in the official icpc on site in india icpc ?
there is a selection process,
all top 50 teams has no restriction, even if all 50 teams are from the same college then all 50 get selected
then next top 100, each college should not exceed 5 teams
then next top 140, each college should not exceed 2 teams
then the rest, only top institute get qualify
Thats really frustrating.
So, what's the problem? Just transfer to a university with weaker teams.
why would you want to go to a worse university for years just to compete a single competition
If you don't give a damn about ICPC, then these qualifiers shouldn't concern you. If you love CP so much, then such transgression shouldn't be a problem to you. I can tell you, that it's a legit practice for strong Russian teams to switch unis just to have an opportunity to qualify for finals. Besides, most of them just enroll into the second university and make a deal with it: they study only in the primary uni and doesn't bother with the second one, and in return they bring medals for this uni.
This in no way justify how bad the qualification process is
https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/157370
You can't expect regionals in India even after giving your best. The reason is given in the above blog.
Fckkkkk ICPC amritapuriii, My friends team secured 2nd place in their college, having solved 6 problems and achieved a rank within the top 350, yet they still haven't been selected.
What makes this even more frustrating is that the selection criteria were changed recently, whereas they registered based on the criteria announced during the registration process. If the criteria were going to be changed, the organizers should have communicated this before the registration process began, rather than changing them after teams had already registered and competed based on the originally announced criteria.
Extremely poor management and a complete lack of transparency from ICPC Amritapuri. Some random tier 69 colleges are selected. they destroyed the pride of ICPC in india, even school students can solve that 1st question. They completely diluted the prestige and significance of the ICPC Regionalist tag.
+1, not to mention the rampant cheating which plagued the contest (because they left it to the colleges and prayed everyone would give it honestly??), and their post-contest BS plag check.
Was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the conduct of the prelims this year has been exceptionally pathetic.
Well for the vast majority of elite teams, they would have been selected. In terms of meritocracy, this is absolutely not the way to go. Lowkey feels like college apps lol
Bro fym top 80 Team isn't qualifying for Amritapuri but fucking random ass Teams qualify just because they are best in their college
Agree,
There should be some min no of problems that should be solved to get into regionals,
This no should not be fixed, depending upon the contest difficulty it should change.
This 3 questions were very basic, so they should have considered teams who have solved 3 or more problems.
Love to know other's view : )
really frustrating to see the deserving candidates being left out while people get selected due to quotas, just ruins the day >: