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 or in multiple Divisions.
Within a division, a school forms one or more teams. Each team can choose to compete as a 5-score team or a 3-score team. Students take the same tests regardless of being on 5-score or 3-score team.
On a 5-score team, there can be up to 20 registered students whose names will appear on the ACSL Leaderboard. The score for each contest is the sum of the top 5 student scores for that contest. Different students from the same team might be in the top 5 for each contest.
On a 3-score team, there can be up to 12 registered students whose names will appear on the ACSL Leaderboard. The score for each contest is the sum of the top 3 student scores for that contest. Different students from the same team might be in the top 3 for each contest.
An adult team advisor must be available to handle communications with the registered students.
A student may only participate as a member of a single team. After Contest #1, a student cannot change teams.
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.
High-scoring students in all divisions will be invited to an end-of-year online Finals competition.