And there are no worries for a tough contest, although competition would be top-notch, the level of coding would be suitable for pre-university students.
Eligibility:
- The student must be enrolled in a full-time school program.
- Student’s age must lie between the ranges of 13-17 years before contest start.
- Students must upload parental consent forms as well as some documentation proving enrollment in a pre-university program.
Requirements
1) To get hold of one functional programming language, that may be C/C++, Python, Java, or maybe JavaScript for Web Development, Dart for Application development, whatever that pulls your interest. For a better uphold follow, Guide to School Programming
2) Once you have a grip at your coding skills, start exploring some of the Data Structures and Algorithms that would upgrade your programming and will give you the ease to code. With that, keep practicing, you may refer to various sites providing a set of problems with their online IDE, like GeekforGeeks and Hackerrank. Until you feel you aren’t confident about the code you write, practice, and practice. Coding in an efficient manner also matters, using the most appropriate formula, algorithm, and keeping the code as subtle as it could be.
3) Also when one is working in a team at a professional level then knowledge of version control, an online platform where team members share project code and ideas, like Git and Github is also helpful which gives an uphold on the work. This helps the person to interact with their team members, no only this but you can share your project to the public through this platform.
How to Get into It?
1) Mark the date for the event declaration, Google Code-in usually starts in December and ends in mid of January that means the registration starts two months before this period, somewhere around September-October. One needs to be active so that the dates for registration don’t miss.
2) The most crucial part of the process, selecting an organization. One must select an organization that suits his\her coding skills the best. It is good to select 2-3 organizations so that you have a variety of exposure and also one of them gets selected for the actual contest. Research upon the organization’s projects and surf through them and find the best you can work upon. To increase the chances of getting selected choose the one that already got through last year. And keep up with a few of them to join for the Code-In.
After selecting the organization, show your communication and teamwork skills, start introducing yourself, take interest in the organization’s work and projects, go through them, and study as well. Try to be in their good books so that your chances get high.
3) Start working for them, contribute, debugging, and code making or documentation, and show them how good are you for this. As a newcomer it might be difficult to cope with experts then start contributing on small scale, debugging and documenting the code, and later move on to major contributions.
You may go through last year’s organization for a reference and how the projects and contribution work.
List of Organizations that were part of Google Code-In 2019: Code-in organization
4) After you keep contributing and gradually build your profile, the final organization list will be out, check out the organization and projects you wished to work for, if they are listed give your 100% and keep contributing, if not listed then contribute to some other organization. There is a lot of learning process, new skills, and the most important chance of working with field experts from different parts of the world.
5) While in this process between December-January, show the organization how much you are devoted, keep contributing in every way you can, also keep a good connection with mentors, ask doubts, and learn. Let the mentors know your contributions and how valuable they would be.
6) Once the coding season ends, the organization picks two top coders who worked smart and made a major contribution towards the project, and then those coders are rewarded by Google with lots of merchandise including t-shirts, jackets, and fully sponsored trips to Google headquarters, California.
Think of the learning process throughout the process and accreditation from one of the prestigious companies in the industry and guess what you are still in your school and this is just the start of the journey. Keep codi9ng and you may be a part of the winner’s list.
Winner list of 2019 Code-In: Winners 2019
And if you miss the opportunity, no problem, there are numerous Coding competitions st University level. One of them is Google Summer of Code, similar to Google Code-In. Google Summer of Code
