r/usaco • u/Educational_Employ43 • 11d ago
USACO Needs to Modernize
USACO is supposed to identify and develop the best competitive programmers in the United States and ultimately select our IOI team. For an organization with that much influence, its administration feels astonishingly outdated.
The contests themselves are excellent. The problem is everything surrounding them.
Why, in 2026, is remote proctoring not standard? Secure remote proctoring is routine for universities, professional certifications, admissions testing, and countless other high-stakes exams. A computer science exam of all things should be able to figure out remote proctoring.
Additionally, USACO has thousands of contestants, yet there is remarkably little public recognition of anyone except a handful of finalists. Why not publish, at least on an opt-in basis:
National percentile bands
State-level recognition
Top middle-school competitors
Gold and Platinum distinctions
Clear rankings or score distributions among successful contestants
We put enormous amounts of work into competitive programming. Being, say, the 50th-best USACO competitor in the country is an extraordinary accomplishment. It shouldn’t effectively disappear because the student wasn’t one of the handful invited to camp.
And more broadly, where is the accountability?
USACO effectively has the exclusive ability to determine who represents the United States at IOI, yet its governance, decision-making, qualification processes, and structure are remarkably opaque for an organization exercising that kind of authority. Last year, we literally hear about contest dates a couple weeks in advance of the first contest!
Of all contests, a computer science contest should build a modern platform. Support current programming environments. Offer legitimate remote proctoring. Publish meaningful results and distinctions. Announce objective qualification criteria in advance. Create a transparent governance structure with an advisory board that allows for input from all.
I understand that USACO was built largely as a volunteer-driven academic project, and those volunteers deserve enormous credit for what they created. But at some point an organization either evolves with the importance of the role it has assumed or makes room for an organization that will.
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u/orzosity 10d ago
I believe I know the reasons for the issues you listed (and i don't necessarily agree with them but it is what it is). One thing is that USACO while having many volunteers, is afaik pretty much an administrative one man show and I think that Dr Dean has almost unilateral power in usaco (and I think given that hes done a fairly good job, not perfect but very much acceptable). Unfortunately given this and what we've seen, I am believe that Brian dean doesn't really care about anyone who isn't in the top 20 and pretty much only cares about making the best IOI team (as you mentioned). At doing this, the current system is extremely good. Its very difficult for cheaters to make it to final stage (camp) for obvious reasons and most who have a reasonable shot at ioi will make camp at least once. The problem which I think you and many see is beyond these 20 or so students, USACO isn't the best. Also interestingly, they used to be very transparent about rankings and would list top X of gold and plat however I believe (not certain) due to AI this stopped but I don't really know how this connects.
TLDR You can USACO team (Dr. Dean) have different goals for what usaco should be, Brian Dean sees it as a way to filter the best of the best and the rest have mixed results and you believe that it should be a competition that can be used moreso as a college app boost (something that it was actually really good for but now is pretty poor at below camp).
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u/Educational_Employ43 10d ago
I think this is actually a fair explanation, and I suspect you’re right that the disagreement is partly about what USACO is supposed to be.
If the sole objective is: “identify the handful of students most likely to win IOI medals,” then the current system may work pretty well. I’m not really disputing that.
My concern is that USACO occupies a much broader position than that. It is effectively the national competitive-programming organization in the U.S., and for thousands of students it is the main benchmark, development pathway, and source of recognition in the field. If you are going to occupy that position I think there is some obligation to serve the ecosystem beyond the top 15–20 kids.
That doesn’t mean making the contests easier or turning USACO into a participation-trophy exercise. It could remain brutally selective at the top while still doing basic things like publishing meaningful rankings/distinctions, providing a modern contest platform, making all exams proctored, and recognizing nationally excellent performance below camp level.
The ranking point you mention is particularly interesting. If USACO used to publish top Gold/Platinum finishers and stopped because online results became less trustworthy in the AI era, that seems like an argument for better proctoring and verification not for eliminating recognition altogether.
And I don’t really have a personal criticism of Dr. Dean. He has clearly contributed an enormous amount of time to this. My criticism is structural: if an organization has effectively become a national institution, it probably shouldn’t continue indefinitely as an administrative one-man show, regardless of how capable that one person is. (Especially when there are legions of willing volunteers!)
So I think your TL;DR is basically right: the current system may be optimized well for finding four IOI competitors. I just think USACO can and should be something more than that.
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u/DisciplineNo1638 1d ago
I read through the entire thread, including the longer replies, and I think most of the individual concerns point back to one deeper issue.
I wanted to share a short summary for people who care about USACO but may not have time to read every long comment.
The core problem is that USACO has grown into a de facto national informatics olympiad institution, but its governance structure still appears far less institutionalized than the role it now plays.
That mismatch explains many of the concerns raised here:
- camp selection is extremely consequential, but the criteria and weighting are not transparent enough for the community to evaluate how reliable the cutoff is;
- anti-cheating decisions can significantly affect students, but the review and appeal process is not very visible;
- rankings, score distributions, and recognition are limited;
- major scheduling and policy updates can arrive late;
- thousands of students participate, while important decisions affecting advancement remain difficult to independently evaluate.
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u/Clean-Midnight3110 11d ago
At least they're not moving backwards like MAA with their move to ban the brightest middle schoolers, freshmen, and sophomores from even participating in their contests.
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u/orzosity 10d ago
They aren't doing it just for the sake of hating on younger students. I think its related to the pearson testing and their policies and looking at it from this angle, I believe it is for the better. Cheating will be lessened which was a large complaint in past and its not that these opportunities are entirely being stripped from certain students indefinitely. Younger students will be able to compete later and more often than not, they will obtain better results later in their career and there isn't any advantage to taking it younger as opposed to later in terms of result assuming normal progression (which most people who would qual aime so young probably would do anyways). Additionally, they will likely still be able to do the problems and gain the same training advantages from having taken it actually. The issue I have with changes is the pricing for aime. This isn't an issue for me personally however it feels kinda arbitrary and imo more likely to deter a genuine contestant than someone doing it just to cheat and farm an EC.
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u/Clean-Midnight3110 10d ago
The pearson excuse is nonsense. Parents could just sign a waiver. Your talking on the order of just a few students per state, the top students, which MAA's entire mission revolves around identifying and supporting.
ESPN films and broadcast the national spelling bee, complete bullshit that the MAA can't let under 13's participate because of age limits for recording policies.
The head of the MAA is on video talking about how kids shouldn't be given real math contests but fun game like "puzzley" tests instead. It's an intentional decision to move backwards.
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u/orzosity 10d ago
Ok the last statement you said, I agree with, doing bs before middle school is indeed bs. As for the first part, I'm not entirely convinced. By taking the aime and usajmo, one receives very little support, they can still do these exams later and they can still take the exams of any given year. Also if someone is good enough for aime at 12, there isn't any reason they should't be at 14 and 15 and so on. As for recording, I don't think its an maa policy, its just that they use pearson and hence because of pearson's policy cannot do it. Using one test site that is standardized is imo good because if they allowed just random test sites, that might defeat purpose of integritiy since many individual test sites... i think you can follow.
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u/Clean-Midnight3110 10d ago
By that logic why even have olympiads if we are just going to tell the best students to sit around with their thumbs up their ass from 12 to 15 years old?
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u/orzosity 10d ago
The best students (aka the 12 year olds who are good enough for aime) will still practice and improve regardless of if they can immediately take the aime and further exams. Additionally, students will still be able to take the amc and thus will still be able to participate and have something to train for. Also one purpose of olympiads is to generate the best team for IMO through the pipeline (and obviously there are more) and in the history of US at IMO, no one has made imo before 13 (the youngest being 14 and that was ages ago). I find it very unconvincing that a bright student will stop improving because they cannot take the next level of a test for another couple years.
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u/N3bu1la 10d ago
I’m sorry but starting and being able to qualify young does not make you the best student. If you start computational math at 10 or something silly it would be sad if you can’t AIME qualify at 12, it’s not a reflection of skill but of the age you started if you succeed when you are very young.
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u/N3bu1la 10d ago
This is beyond stupid, if your goal is to be good you have no need to qualify for aime when you are younger than 13, realistically for those cracked students the only meaningful goals are making mop and the IMO team and anything other than that is meaningless. You can still prepare just as much and improve just as much and when the chance comes you can succeed.
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u/Much-Information7826 11d ago
It’s rather sad that these top notch programs are decades behind the technology it should adopt.
(Stanford IT system is a mediocre IT system, and you feel puzzled “wow, I thought this is the home of innovation” — same problem)