The USACO holds six Internet Contests during the academic year, and in the late Spring conducts the US Open, a proctored exam. Based on the results of these contests, 16 students are invited to an all-expense-paid training camp in the early summer, where 4 students are selected to be the US Team at the  International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI).

Are you a high school or junior high school student interested in competing in the USA Computing Olympiad? It's easy to get involved; you only need to do these two things:

• sign up for the email list; the USACO conducts six annual
  contests which are announced and distributed over this list
  
   
• register for the training pages and start working through the material to hone your competition computing skills

Contests are three to five continuous hours in length. You can generally compete for those hours any time during Friday through Monday of a contest weekend. The tasks are presented on the web; you submit your solutions for pre-grading through
a simple interface.  It's that easy!

USACO never charges entry fees