Aaron Prager: Promoted to USACO Platinum

The USA Computing Olympiad runs several online contests each season, sorting competitors into four divisions: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Competitors move up by scoring above a promotion threshold, so reaching Platinum means clearing every division below it.

In the third contest of the 2026 season, Aaron competed in the Gold division against 1,245 total participants, 910 of them pre-college students. The contest had three problems: Good Cyclic Shifts, Picking Flowers, and Random Tree Generation, each worth a third of the 1,000 available points.

Any competitor scoring 750 or higher was automatically promoted to Platinum. Aaron scored 950, ranking 335th among all pre-college participants in the division, and moved up to Platinum: USACO’s highest division.

This one is separate from Aaron’s work on BoostT1D: it is straight competitive algorithmic programming, judged only on solving hard problems correctly and fast.