Is making USACO gold prestigious for college admissions?

Applying to College
1

I recently qualified for USACO gold, and I want to know how prestigious it is. Since I’ve already submitted by applications, do you guys think it is worth notifying the colleges that I applied to that I made it to gold? For some schools, I applied for engineering, and for others, I applied for Computer Science.

Thanks!

2

Very. Definitely notify your colleges. Congrats!

3

Thank you, I’ll be sure to let my colleges know. I’m not really sure exactly how important it is though. Is there any other award that you could compare USACO gold to to help me understand just how important it is?

4

Notify the schools of your achievement. Don’t worry about comparisons.

5

Making gold usaco nowadays is comparable to qualifying for AIME and scoring a 6 or so.

6

I was wondering this too! @BlueSnail – just wonder did you inform the colleges you applied to about your USACO accomplishment & if so how? Any responses? Congrats to you!

7

@CA1543 Thanks!

I just emailed every college’s admissions email saying something like “It’s been more than a month since I submitted the apps, so here are a few of my accomplishments since then.” I included a brief description of what USACO is in case they don’t know. I also mentioned a few other accomplishments in my email.

Some of the colleges responded with “thanks, we’ll add the update to your application”, and some responded with “please upload this same message to your applicant portal”, so I did that.

Also, since you compete at USACO, did you take the AMC? If you make the AIME would you send another email to colleges about that? I’m not sure what I would do because I read somewhere that you should never email the admissions office about your application more than once. If that’s the case, maybe you want to wait until the AMC results come out before sending your update.

8

I’m sorry to say but USACO Gold isn’t really “prestigious”. There are like 20 kids in my school with USACO Gold status (I personally have silver as a sophomore). Unless you make it to IOI you probably don’t want to brag about it. Just my two cents.

9

@0x0001 You don’t have to be sorry about that. That’s the whole reason I created this thread. I wanted to find out what other people think of it. Thanks for letting me know.