AIC Hosts Competitive Programming Event for Intermediate and Advanced Students

Report on the Competitive Programming Workshop Held in Preparation for the 2025 ICPC Asia Japan Online First-Round Contest

AIC held a competitive programming workshop for intermediate and advanced students every Tuesday for eight weeks from May 13 to July 1, 2025.
Competitive programming involves solving given problems through code, with participants evaluated on both their speed and final results. By engaging with these problems, students are able to improve their programming skills, logical thinking, and problem-solving abilities.
There has also been an increase of companies in recent years that have used competitive programming as a part of their hiring screening process. The growing attention these events are receiving is evident from the fact that OpenAI is now a sponsor of AtCoder’s international coding competition, the World Tour Finals 2025.

Keio’s programming workshops were designed to hone participant’s skills in preparation for the ICPC Asia Japan First-Round Contest scheduled for July 4, 2025. During each of the workshops, participants were assigned at least twelve problems which they had to work on within a given time limit. This was followed by a lecture segment in which workshop organizers explained the problems were in detail. Likewise, during the virtual contest, organizers made sure to provide a collection of hints and examples of how to approach the prompts so that students could build confidence in tackling more difficult problems.

Eleven teams from Keio University participated in the ICPC Asia Japan First-Round Contest, two of which passed with flying colors and will compete at the Yokohama Asian regional competition scheduled in December.Of these, Keio’s “Rinshan Solution” team was able to solve all of the problems in only one hour and thirty-one minutes, placing first overall in the national qualifiers.

This marks the first time in history that a team from Keio University has taken first place in the ICPC Asia Japan First-Round Contest.