DPS Modern Indian School in Doha wins Carnegie Mellon’s High School Programming Competition
Doha- DPS Modern Indian School in Doha was announced the first place winner of Carnegie Mellon Qatar’s fourth annual High School Programming Competition – a computer programming contest where students demonstrate their computer skills and talents. Qatar Academy and the American School of Doha earned second and third place respectively in this thought-provoking competition that took place on Saturday, March 26 at the university’s campus.
A total of 16 high school students from six regional schools participated in this year’s competition, which is organized by the Computer Science Department and the Pre-College Program office of Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.
“We know that there is a group of students out there who love to solve problems through programming and who enjoy working in a team structure,” said Bruce Volstad, manager of the Pre-College Program at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. “Not all the teams that are attending this competition are expert programmers, but this competition gives them an opportunity to develop and experiment with their skills. Through this kind of competition, Carnegie Mellon Qatar encourages students to further pursue a career in programming that will allow them to use these skills.”
Teams of three students were given a total of eight computer problems to solve within a four-hour time frame. The top three teams were awarded a trophy along with certificates.
Team ‘Analog,’ from DPS Modern Indian School, answered six out of eight problems, finishing with the highest score in the competition. “We are really happy that we have won this competition, success is always a sweet experience. The problems were really challenging and thought-provoking, so it was a big deal to us to win this contest.
“We didn’t have much time to prepare for the event but it’s only through the overall team effort that we were able to take first place. Our strategy was to maximize the number of problems that we can solve in the given time frame, so we decided to do the easy problems first,” said Siddarth Malhotra, team leader of ‘Amlog’. The team’s problems were under one theme, ‘Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup’.
“We hope that in the future, this competition attracts more competitors of varied ages. It is important that schools set up computer clubs, to allow interested students to enter the field early and to learn more about problem solving, mathematics, logic and other skills that involve software and its development,” he added.
The participating schools in the High School Programming Competition were the American Community School (UAE), the American School of Doha, Doha Modern Indian School, DPS-Modern Indian School, M.E.S Indian School, and Qatar Academy.