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@harrisonqian / Young Builder Resources / wiki/competitions-hackathons.md
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--- visibility: public-edit --- # competitions & hackathons i've done a lot of competitions. here's an honest account of every one — what it was, how I did, and what I actually learned. ## hackathons (3.5 wins out of 5) hackathons are where I learn fastest. you compress months of learning into 24-48 hours, and you come out with something real. the [[communities]] you find through competitions are often where lasting relationships start. ### TRAE Solo Hackathon (Oct 2025) - **result:** 1st place out of 29 ($1500) - **where:** a tech company's office - **what I learned:** solo hackathons force you to scope ruthlessly. no teammate to split work with means every feature choice matters. ### AGI House Agent Skills Build Day (Mar 14, 2026) - **result:** won - **team:** built a Claude skill with two teammates. also launched referral.bike at the same event. - **what I learned:** the best hackathon teams have complementary skills, not overlapping ones. ### EventConnect at an AI company's hackathon event - **result:** won audience vote - **team:** built with a friend - **what I learned:** audience votes reward demos that feel magical. polish the demo. ### MongoDB Agentic Memory & Context Engineering Hackathon (Oct 11, 2025) - **result:** top 6 out of 70 - **where:** SF - **what I learned:** "top 6 out of 70" feels like almost-winning, which is its own kind of useful. close losses sharpen you. ### Gemini Multimodal Hackathon (Oct 18-19, 2025) - **result:** produced OnCue demo - **what I learned:** multimodal demos are hard to scope. the "wow" moment needs to be in the first 30 seconds. ### organizing: Startup Pitch Hackathon (May 9, 2026) - co-organizing this. $5k/$2.5k/$1.25k prizes. being on the other side of hackathons teaches you what judges actually look for. ### upcoming: SF Hackathon (Apr 25, 2026) ### hackathon advice (earned from actually winning) 1. **the demo is everything.** judges spend 2-5 minutes with your project. if you can't show something impressive in that time, nothing else matters. 2. **scope aggressively.** the #1 mistake is building too much. pick one impressive thing and polish it. 3. **the 70/30 rule:** spend 70% of your time on the core feature and 30% on the demo/presentation. most teams invert this. 4. **pick the right prize track.** "best use of [sponsor API]" categories are usually less competitive than "best overall." using a sponsor's API well is often a free win. 5. **tell a story.** judges remember the team that had a compelling "why" more than the team with the most features. 6. **[[shipping-products|ship it]].** having a live URL or working app beats a slide deck every time. ## math competitions math competitions teach you to think precisely under pressure. the skills transfer to everything. ### AMC 10 - **scores:** 91.5/73.5 (2024), 88.5/97.5 (2023) - **honest take:** the canonical pipeline. I did it, it was useful for building mathematical maturity, but I didn't make AIME and that's fine. the AMC grind has diminishing returns if you're not naturally headed toward USAMO. ### HiMCM (Nov 2025) - **team:** three teammates - **what we did:** fire/evacuation scenario, Monte Carlo simulation - **honest take:** massively underrated competition. see [[math-modeling]] for the full breakdown. this is the closest to actual applied math/engineering work. 36 hours, real-world problem, build a model. I love math modeling competitions more than contest math. ### COMAP MCM/ICM - **result:** Meritorious (top 10%) - **what we did:** spectral bisection, cellular automata, graph traversal - **honest take:** harder and more prestigious than HiMCM. competing as high schoolers against college teams and placing top 10% was a genuine accomplishment. ### M3 Challenge - **result:** 143/770 (top 19.8%), qualified for second round - **honest take:** 14-hour math modeling challenge, free to enter. good entry point into modeling competitions. we qualified for the second round which felt great. ### MTFC - **result:** semifinalist (2025-26) - **what we did:** equitable bus routing - **honest take:** the problem was genuinely interesting. applied math with social impact. ### IMMC 2026 (Mar 18-23) - international math modeling. similar flavor to HiMCM/MCM but with an international pool. ### BmMT - **result:** 2nd best puzzle round score (2023) ### SMT (a university math tournament) - **result:** honorable mention individual + team ### NMT (my school's math tournament) - I co-lead this. organizing a math tournament teaches you logistics, problem-writing, and community-building all at once. ## physics competitions ### USAYPT (Jan 2026) - **result:** 2nd nationally. the format (physics meets debate) also develops [[giving-talks|public speaking]] skills - **team:** 11 members - **honest take:** unique format — physics meets debate. you present research, other teams poke holes in it. teaches you to defend ideas rigorously. placing 2nd nationally with this team was one of my proudest moments. ### F=ma Exam (2026) - the qualifier for USAPhO. took it. ## science & research competitions ### BL4S / CERN BeamLine for Schools (submitted Mar 2026) - **team:** four members - **what:** proton beam shielding simulation - **honest take:** writing a proposal for actual CERN beam time forces you to think like a real physicist. even if we don't get selected, the proposal-writing process was incredibly valuable. ### Davidson Fellows (submitted Feb 2026) - **what:** submitted my paper on anesthetics/EEG - **honest take:** this rewards depth. you need to have done something genuinely significant. I submitted my EEG [[publishing-research|research]]. ### Golden Gate STEM Fair (early Mar 2026) - regional science fair. ### Breakthrough Junior Challenge - **result:** top 40% - **what I did:** RL intuition video - **honest take:** this is a video competition, not a research competition. production quality matters as much as scientific accuracy. top 40% isn't a win, but making the video taught me about science communication. ### Congressional App Challenge - **what I submitted:** Pause app - **result:** congressional certification - **honest take:** relatively low bar compared to other competitions, but the certification from your congressperson is a nice touch. ### other competitions I've done - **BIG Idea Competition:** Honorable Mention - **Scholastic Writing Awards:** submitted Dec 2025 - **NACLO:** open round (computational linguistics — surprisingly fun) - **PicoCTF 2024:** cybersecurity CTF. good for learning security basics. - **Wharton Data Science:** participated - **Fed Challenge (NY Fed):** did this with a teammate. made a corn podcast. yes, a corn podcast. - **Ethics Bowl:** went 2-1 ## chess won USATW U1000 6-0, placed at SF Scholastic, won at a local tournament, bughouse 8-0. chess is the thing I do for fun that happens to also be competitive. ## the meta competitions are tools, not goals. I did a lot of them — probably too many. the ones that taught me the most were the ones where I was genuinely interested in the problem (math modeling, USAYPT, hackathons), not the ones where I was chasing a result. if you're going to compete, go deep in one or two areas rather than shallow in five. see [[learning-paths]] for why interest-driven learning beats credential-driven learning. I went too wide sometimes. a national-level result in one thing is worth more than mediocre participation in everything.
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