The Ins and Outs of the Waterloo CCC 2024

Written by: Rebecca Li

February 24th, 2024

Last Wednesday, students from computer science courses participated in the annual Canadian Computing Competition created by Waterloo University. Known for its technology programs, this contest gave students a taste of the computer science world as well as a chance to see their potential.

Most of the 17 participants this year were in the AP computer science class last semester while some from the regular classes still took on the challenge.

Regardless, this competition is open to all students at any level. This is because the contest offers two sessions running simultaneously: the Junior and Senior contests. Participants all log in the same, but can enter and exit any of the two sessions at any time as they wish. This allows participants to score points from both of the sessions and only takes the highest-scored session as their final score.

This year, the Waterloo CCC is once again supervised by Ms.Gilfillan, one of the computer science teachers at JMSS. Students were excused from all of their afternoon classes since the competition is in total three hours in length and were asked to arrive at the computer lab in the school library.

Student Testimonies

"Even though the questions were difficult, I had fun doing it. For future takers, I would recommend practicing a couple online questions just to get used to the format so you don’t waste time. I also did it to help my Waterloo application, since a good score can only help you, and a ‘bad score’ doesn’t hurt your admissions chances.”

- Ibraheem, a grade 12 student who took ICS4R last semester

“This is my first time doing the Waterloo CCC and I do not regret signing up a single bit. The scenarios were interesting and unique and they really get your brain going. I did the junior session this time because I wanted to see how far I can go since Waterloo contests are usually REALLY hard. So I was surprised to find that the junior contest was pretty much grade 11 content!”

- Rebecca, a grade 12 student who did the junior session

In addition to student testimonies, Ms.Gilfillan also shared that only two girls participated out of 17 students in total. Unfortunately, that is a higher percentage compared to last year’s statistics. Even with the demand for computer science, it’s been a goal to reduce the gender gap in these STEM pathways. Also as the teacher supervisor for the JMSS Programming Club, Ms.Gilfillan has been working hard on that and remains an important advocate for equity in the Computer Science classroom in particular.

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