(Last Updated: 2024-08-20)

Team Sponsor Eligibility

• HPE CodeWars is a high school coding competition.
• As of August 2024, sponsors are required to be associated with a school* (teacher preferred).
• All HPE CodeWars teams must be sponsored by a teacher, or a school affiliated person as described below.
• A sponsor must be an adult (19+), non-student person who is:
  • A credentialed teacher working at a licensed and accredited school (preferably in a STEM field)
  • Or a home school teacher working as part of an accredited school's home school program (e.g. the home school is registered with the state, and progress is verified with the state for all students. HPE CodeWars admin staff will have to verify the home school's registration with the state before a sponsorship account will be approved)
  • Or school personnel who hold a university degree in a STEM field, or have 5+ verified years of experience working in a STEM field (subject to review).
• All sponsors are subject to review and approval by the HPE CodeWars administration team. Sponsors may need to supply additional documentation if not employed as a credentialed teacher and listed as a teacher for their school on the school's website (the primary way HPE CodeWars staff verifies sponsor accounts).
• Sponsors are expected to represent a high school, not just one student. We will not accept a sponsor who wants to sponsor a single student. Parents, mentors, club leaders, and similar, will not be granted, or allowed to maintain, a sponsorship account¹.
• Sponsor accounts are subject to periodic review. It is the responsibility of the account holder to keep their account up to date. If the account holder changes schools or job roles, they must update their account accordingly. If a sponsor account is found to no longer be eligible during HPE review, the account will be disabled.

*Schools are defined as institutes of learning, accredited by their State / Province as a secondary / high school, which have the primary mission of educating students five (5) days a week, for at least six (6) hours per day, for at least eight (8) months per calendar year at a physical location (generally a school campus). Charter and private schools are acceptable. Home schools are also acceptable provided that (1) the students are registered with the State/Province and School District, and the students still have access to a high school campus for at least four (4) hours per week. Home school, charter schools, and private schools will be required to submit their accreditation documentation and/or registration paperwork with the State/Province before a sponsor account is approved. We are not accepting clubs and non-school affiliated groups at this time.

Student Eligibility

• To be eligible for HPE CodeWars team registration, students must:
  • be age 13-18
  • be enrolled in a public or private accredited high school (secondary school), or state-registered home school, and sponsored by an approved adult sponsor (see sponsor eligibility section)
  • not have been previously banned/disqualified from prior HPE CodeWars events
  • be in good standing with their school in terms of grades, graduation progress, discipline, and behavioral policy
  • (In-Person Only) be able to arrange for transportation to the in-person contest site.
  • (Remote Only) physically located in the United States or Canada and able to participate remotely using devices/networking/internet which they or their school provide.

Teams

• Sponsors organize their students into competition teams. A team should be:
  • Two to three people (you can have a team of one, but we do not recommend it. Problems created for the contest assume a team size of 2-3)
  • Exceptions are sometimes made to accommodate larger teams, but that is not guaranteed
  • Most schools are limited to a single sponsor
  • Most sponsors are limited to three teams. Exceptions can be made on a case-by-case basis, but are not guaranteed.
  • Students selected for teams should be as ready as possible to compete on contest day. Most sponsors will get 9 slots for students to split into 3 teams. We suggest holding team tryouts if there are more students who want to be on a team than spots available.

Communications

• All students and sponsors participating in HPE CodeWars must create and maintain an account in the contest system for themselves with an email address that is able to receive e-mail from our domain name(s), e.g. hpe.com and hpecodewars.org.
• HPE CodeWars will send account and contest updates to your registered e-mail address on your account. If an e-mail we send to you bounces back to us or is undeliverable, we will deactivate your account. (So please let us know if your school's e-mail servers will be offline for a scheduled period of time).
• Opting Out Of E-mails:
  • HPE CodeWars may send informational e-mails to your account occasionally. You are able to fully opt-out of receiving those messages if you wish.
  • However, student and sponsor accounts cannot opt-out of receiving HPE CodeWars business/account related e-mails. If student or sponsor accounts wish to opt-out of all HPE CodeWars e-mails, they must close their account (which will also remove the account from the contest).

Registration

• Registration is free for students and sponsors
• Registration opens approximately one month prior to the contest date, and closes about 2 weeks prior to the contest date. Once closed, new accounts generally cannot be created, but teams can still be managed by their sponsor.
• New accounts generally cannot be created unless registration is open.
• New accounts must first verify that they are able to receive e-mail from the contest system.
• New sponsor accounts must also wait until sponsor eligibility review has been completed on their account before their account will be enabled.
• New account creation is not guaranteed for student or sponsor accounts. All accounts are subject to review/removal by HPE CodeWars staff
• During registration, approved sponsors can accept students onto their student roster, students can select their school and teacher/sponsor, and sponsors can assemble those students into teams which are then submitted to a contest.
• Remote Proctors Required Sponsors for Virtual Teams need to be able to proctor their teams, in-person, on contest day.
  • On the morning of the contest, sponsors and their teams will need to check-in with HPE CodeWars. We will setup a registration video call that sponsors will need to join with their team(s).
  • Team numbers will not be issued until teams check-in to the registration call with their sponsor present in person. The sponsor must agree to monitor their team(s) to ensure all posted rules for the competition are followed (e.g. one screen, no copying solutions, no LLM/"ai", etc.)
  • During the registration call HPE CodeWars will e-mail a check-in code to the e-mail address on file for the sponsor of the team. The sponsor will need to read the check-in code back to us on the registration call**.
  • There will be no exceptions to the requirement that Virtual teams must have an in-person proctor monitoring them on contest day. However, if a sponsor needs to be in two places at once (the sponsor will be taking some teams to a physical location, but has Virtual teams as well), we will allow the sponsor to designate a proxy proctor to act in their place.
  • IF A SPONSOR NEEDS A PROXY PROCTOR TO ACT IN THEIR PLACE, THEN THAT PERSON MUST REGISTER FOR, AND BE APPROVED AS, A SPONSOR ACCOUNT -- BEFORE THE DAY OF THE CONTEST. Only approved sponsor accounts can act as a proxy for a Virtual team.
  • ** In the case where a proxy proctor is acting on behalf of a sponsor, they will need to make arrangements to communicate with each other during the check-in process. HPE CodeWars will not send the check-in code to a proxy proctor. The code will, in all cases, be sent to the registered sponsor account associated with the team.

Novice or Advanced?

• Please note if a student cannot get a "hello world" program to compile and run on their own, then they are not ready to be placed on a team (novice or advanced) yet. Students who cannot code at least a "hello world" program should not attend HPE CodeWars until they have a bit more experience.
• Having said that, there are no definitive rules dividing Novice teams from Advanced teams. A team's experience is subjective and relative to individual students and schools. However, here are some general guidelines:

Novice teams:

• Are newer to programming
• Can "print" to the screen (standard out) without assistance
• Can read "words" and/or lines in from the command line (standard in)
• Are able to open a file and "read in" the contents from that file into their program
• Understand variables
• Understand conditionals
• Understand basic program design and logic (e.g. I need to gather all of my data before trying to run calculations on it, and I should not try to do math operations on string data, etc.)

Advanced teams:

• Understand all concepts listed in the Novice section
• Usually have competed in HPE CodeWars (or a similar contest) at least once before, or have completed at least one semester of an AP Computer Science (or equivalent) course.
• Understand more advanced concepts such as: string interpolation, recursion, base conversion, string parsing/splitting, run-time limits (and how to optimize), parallel processing, etc.
• Are able to open and traverse directories, examining and working with files in those directories.
• Note: advanced teams may face tougher problems on contest day, and at the contest organizer's discretion.

Equipment Needed

• In Person:
  • One computing device capable of writing code in one (or more) of our accepted languages.
  • One Screen == One computing device. Each team is allowed use of one, and only one, screen during the competition.
    • If you bring a tower and a monitor, no problem.
    • If you bring a laptop, tablet, etc. and a monitor, then the computing device's screen must be closed/off if the monitor is plugged in (which means you will need a docking station and a keyboard and mouse)
    • Your phone counts as a "screen". If your phone is out and the screen is on, then all of your team's other screens must be off.
    • Old-school CRT monitors or any other power-hungry entities are not allowed (due to power consumption). Other external monitors should be limited to 24" in size (due to space considerations).
  • No printers. Printers are not allowed.
  • No power hogs. Your team is only allowed to use one power strip (2 plugs max) at your table with a limited amount of wattage/amps (enough to power a standard laptop or average tower computer, your monster gaming rig which draws 950 watts to run – won't work). Plan accordingly.
• Remote:
  • A computing device capable of writing code in one (or more) of our contest-allowed programming languages. (Yes, you can use your phone if you feel you can make that work.)
  • An internet connection.
  • The ability to reach our contest system (domain/website) during contest day (if your school/home internet is blocking the domain – that will be a problem. Check before contest day.)

Reference Materials

• You may have access to the internet during the contest, but you may not. Some sites are limiting internet connections to the contest site, W3Schools, maybe Wikipedia, and that is about it. Plan accordingly.
  • (If internet access is available at your site, do not search for complete program solutions or use LLM/"ai" bots to generate solutions for you. Teams found to have plagarized solutions, or are found to have submitted work suspected of not being their own (we will be checking) will be disqualified from future events, have any wins canceled in our system, and will forfeit any/all prizes.)
• You may (and should) also bring books/printed materials to the in-person contest. When all else fails, your book cannot go "offline."
• You may also bring code, that your team/school has written, to the in-person contest.

Programming Languages

• The following programming languages are accepted for HPE CodeWars submissions:
  • C
  • C++
  • Java
  • Python 3

Contest Day

• Both the Novice and Advanced teams may share a common pool of approximately 20-30 problems (advanced teams may face tougher problems, depending on the contest).
• Each problem carries a point value, with values increasing with problem difficulty.
• The goal is to solve as many problems as possible in 3 hours. At the end, the teams with the most points win!
• The judges' rulings are final.
• All solutions must programmatically determine the results. In other words, student solutions cannot just print out a solution to a problem that they determine by hand. The judges will be using some different data sets to judge the functionality of student solutions at the judging table.
• Programs must be a standard console application. No GUI programs.
• Teams will have many programming tasks to choose from. Students may not be able to solve them all, so they are advised to study them and choose their problems wisely.
• HPE CodeWars utilizes a custom browser-based submission/judging/scoring system. Please verify that all student-device browsers are: modern, web-standards compliant browsers. Internet Explorer is not supported.
• Students must use the account they created which was used to join their sponsor's roster on contest day. If a student forgets their password, use the self-help tools available on our help page. If a student gets locked out (due to too many failed attempts) please use the self-help tool available on our help page. Please only contact our staff for help if all self-help attempts have been tried (which will be the first thing they ask).
• Students should not share their solutions anywhere, and only discuss the problems within their team and on the official HPE CodeWars Discord server (if made available that year).
• Solutions go into a queue for judging. Submissions from all teams will be judged in the order they were received. Each team can have one submission per problem queued at a time. For example, if a team submitted solutions for problems 3 and 5, they won't be able to submit a correction to problem 3 until their previous problem 3 program is judged (problem 5 in the queue does not affect problem 3). The judges will have hundreds of submissions to judge, and a team's solution may wait in the queue for many minutes before it is tested.
• Need Wi-Fi (In-person only). HPE CodeWars events utilize a custom browser-based submission/judging/scoring system via an 802.11x wireless network. Please ensure that the team computing device is wireless-capable before the event day. If students can connect to a public wireless network (e.g. the public library or Panera/Starbucks) and browse the Internet using their device, their device should work at HPE CodeWars. Some school computers have security lockdowns that prevent wireless configuration, so please verify this before coming to HPE CodeWars with a school computer.
• Failure is an option. There is no limit to the number of submissions teams can submit to solve a given problem. However, note that in the case of a tie score, the winners will be determined by the fewest incorrect submissions.
• Corrections during the competition. Any necessary corrections to contest problems will be displayed to all competitors on their team page in the contest system, and announced in the contest room(s), and in the official HPE CodeWars Discord server (if made available that year).
• Test before submitting. Verify that your team's program works with all of the student example input before submitting it to the judges. Don't waste your team's time (and the judges') submitting an incomplete program which could have been caught with more thorough testing.
• The contest server determines the time. The system will automaticallly cut-off submission of solutions once the contest server determines that the contest has ended. The contest server's clock determines that point in time. Not your watch. Not your computer's time. The contest server's time -- which is displayed prominently (in 30-45 second intervals) on the team contest page -- controls that. Therefore it is a bad plan to try to wait until 30 seconds before the end of the contest to submit all of your solutions, in the hopes of lulling the competition into a false sense of security. The server will get busier as the contest comes to a close, and you may find that you only manage to submit 2 of your 5 pending solutions in that scenario. It is better/safer to submit your solutions as you finish them.

Raffle Prize Eligibility

• Students must successfully solve problems zero and one along with at least three (3) additional problems worth 1-3 points, or one additional problem worth 4+ points, by the end of the contest in order to be eligible for raffle prizes. Raffle prizes are generally only offered at in-person contests.

Disqualification

• Actions, behavior and conduct subject to immediate disqualification and possible expulsion from the contest event:
  • Teams submitting malicious code which would cause harm to a system which ran it (e.g. rm -rf, or rmdir /s/q (and any and all variants thereof)) will be immediately disqualified (no warning will be given) if the code was "live" and not in a comment.
  • Students acting inappropriately (example: trolling, fighting, use of racial slurs, posting hate material, etc.) before, during or after the contest, while on HPE property, or while using HPE's CodeWars Discord server, or contest software. In the case of an individual student fighting or posting hate material, it will be left to the discretion of HPE CodeWars staff as to whether the entire team will be disqualified, or just the student at fault -- on a case-by-case basis.
  • Teams found to be using Large Language Model (LLM)/"AI" helpers, or similar, (such as: GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Google Bard, etc.) during the contest. (Intellisense, and similar "complete the code word/loop structure you started typing" is fine. Macros authored by the students are also fine.)
  • Teams found to be looking at/using other team's code (even from the same school) or receiving coding suggestions/help from outside their team (including from parents and sponsors).
  • Teams determined to not be making a good faith effort to compete (example: submitting nothing but hard-coded "solutions" for problems, or nonsense solutions which make no effort to actually solve the problem).
  • Teams found to be trying to circumvent contest security, or detected to be actively trying to break contest security (example: trying to guess another team's login password, or trying to directly access the system API instead of using the contest interface provided).
• A warning may be issued instead of a disqualification at the discretion of HPE CodeWars staff, for less extreme behavior.
• Disqualification Consequences:
  • The team will lose access to the contest system (they will not be able to submit solutions to the contest anymore, and will find their account(s) locked out).
  • The team may be asked to leave HPE property at an in-person event.
  • The team will forfeit any and all prizes from the contest.
  • Disqualified members of the team will not be able to return to subsequent HPE CodeWars events.
  • The team's sponsor will lose one team spot for one (1) year (whenever that sponsor next chooses to submit teams to the contest again). If a sponsor's team(s) are repeatedly disqualified or a sponsor's team(s) actions are particularly egregious, that sponsor may have their account canceled and lose the ability to sponsor further teams to HPE CodeWars events.

Addenda

• Additional rules, modifications, and more details may be made available to you on the day of the event.

1. Site leads reserve the right to continue to permit select non-teacher sponsors, which have already sponsored a team in a prior HPE CodeWars event, at an in-person (on-site) event, to continue to maintain their sponsorship account -- for in-person contests only. No new sponsorship accounts from non-school affiliated personnel will be accepted going forward after the 2024 contest.