Doing well in the the ACM Programming competition requires training time IMHO. The best competitors will have strong programming skills and a deep knowledge ba

Doing well in the the ACM Programming competition requires training time IMHO. The best competitors will have strong programming skills and a deep knowledge base of problem patterns and the best way to solve them. I was on the Stanford B team back in the day ('80s), and I know that if I were a student now, I'd use my free time to build a product/company rather than spending much effort preparing for the ACM competition. While some student programmers aren't swayed by the tremendous capitalist forces, I'd be surprised if it didn't have an impact on which programmers made it through campus preliminaries. There's just so many opportunities competing for your time if you're a good young programmer nowadays. As well as MIT and Stanford performed, I'd have to wonder about student programmers who skipped the competition because they have their sight set on bigger prizes. The same might be said, though, for the other universities even if they aren't entrepreneurial hotbeds.