American Computer Science League (ACSL) organizes computer programming and computer science contests for K-12 schools, organizations and local groups. The 2024-2025 school year will be the 47th year of continuous operation! Last year, over 6,000 students from the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia participated in the regular season competitions.

Divisions

ACSL has five divisions:

• Senior
• Intermediate
• Junior
• Classroom
• Elementary

providing an appropriate challenge for students of varying ages and abilities.

We encourage schools and organizations to join more than one division, so that students can participate in the division best matching their ability.

Contest topics are similar across divisions but vary in levels of detail and difficulty.

Within a division, a school forms one or more teams.

Each team can have a maximum of 12 students.

A school can choose to compete in the 5-score or 3-score division: that is, the team score for each contest is the sum of the top 5 (or 3) students scores in that contest.

A school can register multiple teams per division. This allows more students to have their scores counted towards a team score and also allows friendly competition within a school.

Advisors can register additional teams after the initial registration form has been completed.

A student may only participate as a member of a single team. After Contest #1, a student cannot change teams.

High-scoring students in all divisions will be invited to an end-of-year online Finals competition.

Elementary Division

Open to students in grades 3 - 6.

Each contest consists of an online 30-minute, 6-question non-programming test, focused on a single category of content.

A different category will be tested on each contest.

Contest categories:

Contest 1: Elementary Computer Number Systems

Contest 2: Elementary Prefix/Infix/Postfix Notation

Contest 3: Elementary Boolean Algebra

Contest 4: Elementary Graph Theory

Junior Division

Best for junior high and middle school students (grade 6-9) who are learning programming or who have coding experience.

Each contest consists of an online 30-minute, 6-question short answer test and an online programming problem to solve in 72 hours.

Schedule

There are four contests during the regular season. The window during which each contest can be accessed on HackerRank is as follows:

Contest #1:

available Nov. 4, 2024; closes Sunday January 12, 2025 @ 11:59pm EST

Contest #2:

available Jan. 6, 2025; closes Sunday March 2, 2025 @ 11:59pm EST

Contest #3:

available Feb. 3, 2025; closes Sunday April 13, 2025 @ 11:59pm EDT

Contest #4:

available March 3, 2025; closes Sunday May 18, 2025 @ 11:59pm EDT

Based on the scores during the regular season, top students in all divisions will be invited to participate in an online Finals competition:

Invitations E-mailed: May 1, 2025 through May 21, 2025

Invitational Finals: Saturday, May 24, 2025