UFDS Mentoring 2023

Hey all,

As always, we hope you’re doing well. We’re reaching out to announce that we’re now opening sign ups for UFDS 2023. This program is designed to train students for ZCO, INOI and IOITC. Last year, we had all 10 gold medallists, 16 silver medallists and 17 bronze medallists at the INOI present in our server. Part of the program is to surround you with others who will attempt the contest, so you can all help each other.

Like last year (and the year before), if you join the program, we’ll help you by:

  • Compiling useful practice problem sets to introduce you to a variety of different techniques
  • Selecting problems to practice with
  • Providing hints to solve problems in practice
  • Discussing problems after a contest
  • Recommending similar problems (if you’d like to reinforce a trick/observation)
  • Providing debugging assistance
  • Finding tutorials for classical techniques
  • Hosting sessions to teach/discuss classical techniques (we now have a list of topics we’d like to cover in order, but we’re usually also happy to teach other things as necessary)
  • Hosting sessions to teach/discuss specific problems

Most importantly, joining the server gives you access to sample ZCO and INOI sets for you to practice on. The majority of participants rate this as the most important element of their preparation.

One of the biggest issues with ZCO preparation is the extremely large gap between learning a programming language and qualifying through ZCO. This year, there is a separate program designed specifically for ZCO, instead of a combined program. Our hope is that this will better serve students struggling to qualify through ZCO. The only criteria for this program is that you understand any programming language (ideally C++, since all instruction will be in C++). You will be given some resources and a couple of weeks to learn C++, although no sessions will be offered on this.

After ZCO, more personalised mentoring for INOI and IOITC will be offered to students in the program who demonstrate an extraordinary level of effort, achievement and willingness to help others during the ZCO preparation process.

If you’re interested in joining, please fill out this form. You will obtain the invite link immediately, but please note that you will only be given roles to view the server once your form submission has been reviewed and approved. In particular, UFDS 2023 is only open to students intending to participate in ZIO, ZCO, INOI and IOITC in 2023, although there is no criteria on having attended or not attended past versions of ICO and UFDS. If you have any questions, please message me on Codeforces or Discord.

Regards,

UFDS Mentoring 2023 Team

12 Likes

am i eligible to apply for ZCO/ZIO if am currently in 12th class (ongoing exams) can i participate in this years 2023 or 2024 ZCO/ZIO olympiad

Discord handle : AronCliff#2980

Hi. I am a student in Grade 11 interested in joining the UFDS discord server. However the link in the google form is invalid, so I am not able to join.

Could you please send me a valid link?

Thank you

UFDS 2024 will be started very soon. It would probably be started around the end of this month. A new post with a new link will be posted soon and you can join in once it is created.

1 Like

Okay thanks!

hariaakash646
exactly when will ufds mentor is going to start for 2024 .

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Probably around late June or early July, I’ll get it confirmed soon.

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Any update ?

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Hey, when is it going to start?

+1 ;

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it’s 7 July already, please atleast tell the expected date.

@socho :point_up_2:

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try messaging him on codeforces, he’s probably more active there

I apologise for the delay in responding to these comments.

Entry to this year’s UFDS will be open within a week. There is a new team of mentors who have volunteered to lead the initiative this year and they will decide how to run the program. Anyone interested should keep a look out on this CC Discuss forum and/or on CF blogs for updates.

(I’m tagging @deshchinar @abhaypandey114 and @ashmit008 since they indicated interest above)

1 Like

Thanks :pray::pray:

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Where we can join UFDS Mentoring 2024

Thanks Bro