Sophomore Daniel Wisdom and junior Franklyn wang were selected as finalists for the USA Computing Olympiad (USACO) 2016-17 season. Wisdom and Wang were 2 of 26 students selected from a large pool of competitors from all over the US. These 26 finalists were selected for their outstanding performance on USACO contests throughout the year; they are invited to attend the USA Computing Olympiad 2016 summer training camp at Clemson University.  

At USACO camp, Wang and Wisdom will attend lectures by USACO coaches, who are part of a group of undergraduate or graduate students at top computing universities. Wang is in the Guernsey’s division; he will specifically train for future years in becoming a contestant for the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) team. The IOI team will represent the US as it competes in the second largest olympiad in the world, the International Olympiad in Informatics, an annual competitive programming competition for high schools.

“The purpose of the Guernsey’s is to train a team for future years,” Wang said. “As a Guernsey, the lower division, I will listen to classes by the coaches about how to approach certain problems, and also do practice problems with other campers together.”

Wang first became involved with computing problems and programming the summer before his freshman year. His initial purpose was to prepare for Accelerated Computer Science. Then, during the summer before 10th grade, Wang began developing his passion, learning C++ and Java, as well as algorithms. However, tt wasn’t until 11th grade when Wang finally began weaving the different ideas together by solving problems with his experience and techniques, which helped him pave  his path towards USACO.

“I think computer science is one of the most practical sciences I’ve ever seen,” Wang said. “There isn’t any theoretical portion where you answer questions about computers, just tackling questions you may one day see in the real world.”

Wang will also be going to the Research Science Institute (RSI), a prestigious international summer research program in the US for high school students. RSI takes place for over five weeks, so Wang will “definitely plans to make time to practice more computer science problems.”