I was wondering if it would be possible to increase the number of contestants allowed to advance to round 2. Only 200 seems very harsh, especially given the incredible amount of time that had to be dedicated. And for only the first round at that! Besides, other Imagine Cup invitationals (e.g. Project Hoshimi) have a ridiculously easy round 1. Perhaps top 500 or something? The total number of contestants looks to be close to 2000, so taking the top one-fourth seems reasonable.

I started doing this invitational a couple of weeks ago, and am at 15K points at the moment, gaining about 1K a day. Unfortunately, so is the leaderboard :-)

So, obviously, I have a slightly selfish reason for asking this :-), but I do believe that my point is quite valid nonetheless. People who are currently in the top 200, what are your views? Your opinion will count more than others, because you are the ones who gain nothing from my suggestion. :-)

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When the going gets scary, the scared get scarce.

I fully support your view. I think more than contestants should advance to the second round and even to the final round. I read on the algorithms webpage that on March 22, 6 worldwide finalists will be announced. I think selecting only six people for the final round is not fair, considering that all of us are working so hard on this contest.
Greater competition in the second and the final round will make them more interesting.

gaurav

Agree!

If only 200, I do deem that I have no need to waste time now.

It seems you must gain 5000+ so that could surely attend 2 round.

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Xian SL
NWPU (Xi'an (which is almost the oldest city in the world with thounds of years history))

I agree with this sentiment. If I remember last year, there was a significant number of contestants who got to round 2 who did not compete, perhaps because they were only interested in the challenge of round 1. It would be unfair if these people took the place of others more interested.

Since the leaderboard will be frozen for the last week, and since there are few points speparating the contestants on the bottom of the leaderboard (a level or two only), those of us there on the brink of the cutoff point are going to have to spend a considerable amount of time working on Herbert in the last week, time  which me may not have aplenty, and which I would hate to see wasted :(

How about at least having the leaderboard run to the end, so we don't have to live in constant fear in the last week, and we can stop early if we get too far behind? (the last week is my exam week)

I think that the number of challengers (200) in round 2 is okay. ^^

But what I don't understand is that the time for round 2 is shorter than the time for round 1! "H" is a language which you can rule in not more than an hour. But to master a .NET language, you'll need a few weeks and lots of experience...

So I would prefer at least equal time for round 2 as for round 1!

my score is just 13000 now

but i think only top 200 pass is OK

I am trying my best to get a space in top 200

cheers,

I'm just tring to keep my position in top 200, but it's really hard. Bottom line is increasing everyday, and maybe even has dramatic changing in the last week, but we won't know that.

In my opinion, top 200 is ok. Because there are only no more than 2k people take part in, and maybe a half will stop before 20th level. So it's a kind of compteting not only on your wisdom, but also patience.

Everyone is busy, we have lectures, homeworks, papers, experiments, but everyone has equal chance in this long time to finish levels. I know someone get 70000+ points in about 15 days, and, we still have 15 days, aren't we? What we should do is to find out which is important to you, then focus on it.

Maybe I partly agree with you that it's better the Leaderboard  not be locked in the last week because we can give up earlier. But there will be less fun, I think. And to be honest, I only want to get a T-shirt from Microsoft:)

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KID the phantem thief.

I agree with Uraka_Lee. Everybody does have pretty much equal chances in this five week contest. For my part, I tried to focus on Herbert for two weeks (lost the first week to network problem :( ) because I'll probably have no more free time to solve the levels in the last two weeks of the competition. And I do notice that there are a few people who needed less than a week to get 70k, though I don't know for sure whether it's truly a week effort or not.

I partly agree with fafnir's opinion. But as the exact rules for round 2 are not yet unveiled, nothing much can be said upon. Maybe the algo division organizers have something up their sleeves ;)

The competition began feb. 6, my exams too, so i began competiting 10days later, my score is 28k now and it's  the 28th of feb., but the score of the 200th increased by 2000 or 3000, it's too difficult to do that when we have courses from 8h a.m. to 4h p.m.
In my opinion, it will be great that the 300  first registrants qualify to round2 :D

I'm also losing hope that I can reach next round... at the beginning, bottom line was at like 12000, and I'm at about that right now...  seems like I'm doing something wrong (I mean substantially wrong, like not spending enough time staring at Herbert...).

You may change number of contestants, it probably won't help me, but isn't it the idea of a competition to get one winner or a few winners?

However, I don't think it's even possible to change this right now.

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We only fall to learn to stand up!