
Maryland Wins the Fall 2013 Hackathon Season - theyCallMeSwift
http://mlh.io/blog/umd-wins-the-fall-2013-hackathon-season-10-15-2013/
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api
Now can we chill out with the cult of the top ten school?

I mean it's not like Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc. aren't _top-notch_ places,
but you don't have to have gone to one of those to be good at what you do.
They also cost a fair penny and we're not all rich or academically-oriented
enough to win scholarships.

(BTW, I do get it. It's a CYA thing. Nobody ever got fired for hiring/funding
a top-ten grad...)

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theyCallMeSwift
I've actually been seeing a trend where more and more companies are actually
trying to recruit hackers from state schools. I think people are finally
starting to get it.

Additionally, I could not be more thrilled with the high number of non-
traditional CS schools in the top 20.

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syswsi
As a Concordia University Comp Sci student (Located in Montreal) I'm glad to
see that they did so well despite the fact that they only attended the MIT
hackathon throughout the whole season (and they were only a team of three).

I hope in the future that more Canadian Universities students get involved in
events like this as we have an abundance of talented people who have something
to prove.

Problem being is that most of these events are hard to get to since they are
located in the United States.

~~~
theyCallMeSwift
There was definitely a noticeable presence from Canadian hackers this season.
Waterloo and Toronto are both in the top 20 schools actually.

MLH will be working with those schools and potentially others to get some
Canadian hackathons on the roster for the spring.

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argonaut
I went to a couple of these hackathons. Clearly this skews towards the East
Coast. A lot of people from Berkeley/Stanford and also Southern CA schools
like UCLA/USC don't go to these because of the hassle of flying out, missing
class, being exhausted (after a red-eye), etc. Even if your flight is paid for
(which is what PennApps did for my ticket). Whereas you're going to see much
higher numbers for East Coast schools that are near these hackathons.

On the flip side, since I'm at Berkeley, I can just take a 30 min. BART ride
to SF if I want to go to a hackathon. It's interesting that the collegiate
hackathons tend to be on the East Coast, but lot's of startup/business related
ones crop up on the West.

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gailees
That kid Shariq Hashme from Maryland killed the game all hackathon season.
Couldn't be more impressed with Maryland's headfirst dive into the forefront
of the student hacker scene.

They were sending buses all across the country every weekend.

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eddiezane
It has been an amazing past few weeks. I've met some amazing hackers from
around the country and have seen some places that I wouldn't normally visit.
Congrats to UMD! Can't wait for the spring.

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hughdbrown
I read merit points as what you want and attendance points as what it costs to
get those merit points. So if you needed 300 merit points to complete your
project, then you could take 92 Columbia attendance units or 4 University of
Chicago attendance units. In a lot of cases, it seems to take a lot of warm
bodies.

~~~
theyCallMeSwift
The big goal of this MLH season was to encourage new hackers to join the
existing community. Specifically, attendance points encourage hackers to
travel to other universities / hackathons that they might not normally go to
and to finish a hack (which is super important). It also incentivizes hackers
to find other people at their schools that they can travel and work with.

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dsugarman
Go Terps! #1

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zan2434
Great that you're incentivizing the growth of this student hacker culture.
It's super productive for these students and can really change lives.

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mattdotc
Just trying to be helpful, the word is 'ado' and not 'adieu' in the phrase
'without further ado.'

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theyCallMeSwift
Good catch, thanks!

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mattdotc
No problem, I was guilty of the same error myself until I got curious enough
to look it up.

...and that's what happens when you ignore other studies in favor of STEM :P

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rza
If the metric is merit point per attendance point, than University of
Rochester destroyed everyone, and UMD is pretty average.

~~~
theyCallMeSwift
What's really incredible is that Maryland didn't get attendance points for
just showing up. They got the points for completing hacks. So over the last 6
weeks, 160 hackers completed hacks at the official MLH events.

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Yhippa
Are there any examples of the types of hacks they're required to do for these
hackathons?

~~~
yefim
There's no required list, but here's the list of all PennApps Fall 2013 hacks:
[http://pennapps.challengepost.com/submissions](http://pennapps.challengepost.com/submissions)

And a list of all MHacks Fall 2013 hacks:
[http://mhacks.challengepost.com/submissions](http://mhacks.challengepost.com/submissions)

And a list of all HackMIT Fall 2013 hacks:
[http://hackmit.challengepost.com/submissions](http://hackmit.challengepost.com/submissions)

hackNY Fall 2013: [https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/fall-2013-hackny-
stu...](https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/fall-2013-hackny-student-
hackathon/hacks)

HackRU Fall 2013: [https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/hackru-
fall-2013/hac...](https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/hackru-
fall-2013/hacks)

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timtamboy63
Georgia Tech went from never competing in national hackathons to #15. Props!

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rektide
UMD earned 666.66 merit points.

I report, you decide!

