Three Kalamazoo College computer science students traveled to Grand Valley State University last weekend to compete in the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), the longest-running higher education programming competition in the world.
More than 50,000 students from more than 100 countries competed in several regional competitions, solving a number of programming problems over the course of five hours. The contest fosters creativity, teamwork and innovation in building new software programs, and tests the students’ ability to work efficiently in challenging conditions.
Chau Ta ’25, Benjamin Whitsett ’27 and Cole Koryto ’25 finished sixth out of 18 teams in the East Division’s Central North America Region, which included students from Ohio, Michigan, Eastern Ontario, Western Pennsylvania and Indiana. K’s representatives, in a team aptly named Bit by Bit, finished higher than five of eight teams from the University of Michigan and one of three teams from Michigan State University among others. Overall, Bit by Bit finished 48th out of 182 teams in the East Division.
With school standings determined by the average scores of all their representing teams, K placed 12th in the East Division. That was good enough for second among five teams from Michigan and first among three teams from Great Lakes Colleges Association institutions.
“I believe this is an outstanding achievement and something we can celebrate,” Dow Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sandino Vargas–Pérez said. “Our students are bright, dedicated and enthusiastic about learning. They enjoy these contests where they can express what they’ve learned here at the College. I asked them, ‘Team, what is your goal for the event?’ They responded, ‘We want to be above the 50th percentile and maybe beat one of the teams from Harvard.’ Not only were they in the top 20%, but they also defeated one of the four teams that Harvard sent and defeated the University of Michigan in average points. They were so delighted with their results.”
