KCSL Rules

1. Eligibility

  • Junior Division: Up to Grade 9 (3rd year in Korean middle school)

  • Intermediate & Senior Division: No grade or age limit

2. Participating Institutions (Teams)

  • An institution may participate in multiple levels but not in multiple Divisions. (e.g. ABC Academy can choose to participate in Intermediate 3 and Senior 5 but NOT in Intermediate 3 AND Intermediate 5.)

  • Different students may compete in different rounds, and there is no limit to the number of the students in each team. (e.g. A team that wishes to compete for Senior 3 can register with 10 students.)

  • An adult team advisor must be available to handle communications with the registered students.

3. Contests

  • All Preliminary Contests are administered as online tests on the Goorm platform.

  • With an exception of a dictionary, no resources including the Internet and human assistance are allowed during the tests.

  • Both Short Problems (Theory) and Programming have five test problems, each of which is worth 1 point (10 points total).

4. Short Problems (Theory)

  • Five problems are given in this part.

  • One point is awarded for each answer that matches the ACSL solution.

  • The time limit is 30 minutes for the Junior, Intermediate, and Senior Division.

  • The only materials allowed for the short answer tests are plain paper and a writing implement. Calculators are not allowed.

5. Programming

  • Five test data are given in this part.

  • One point is awarded for each program output that matches ACSL's test output.

  • Students have 3 hours to submit their programming solution.

  • Students must work alone in programming their code.

  • Any programming language may be used, however, Java, C, C++, Python, or Python 3 are recommended.

6. Scores

  • A team score is the sum of the best 3 or 5 student scores for each contest.

  • All team scores are posted on ACSL Homepage.

  • Based on cumulative scores from the four preliminary rounds, about 80 teams are invited to the All Star Contest (the Finals).

  • Due to COVID-19, an online Finals as an individual contest was hosted in lieu of an All Star Contest in 2019-2020.

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