I’m super excited that after a ton of hard work from the MLH board and myself, we’ve released the official school standings from PennApps, MHacks, and HackNY. You can find them on the standings page or read on for more details about what went in to calculating them.
As of right now, the top 10 teams are all within a few 100 points of each other. This is super exciting because it means the title is still within reach for any of them. A couple of good placements at HackMIT or HackRU could change things dramatically and every hack is going to count. Right now, the top 10 teams and scores are:
| Rank | School | Attendance Pts. | Merit Pts. | Total Pts. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carnegie Mellon University | 108 | 450 | 558 |
| 2 | Columbia University | 84 | 300 | 384 |
| 3 | University of Maryland | 52 | 316.66 | 368.66 |
| 4 | Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey | 78 | 236.66 | 314.66 |
| 5 | University of Michigan | 71 | 200 | 271 |
| 6 | Stanford University | 14 | 200 | 214 |
| 7 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 6 | 150 | 156 |
| 8 | Virginia Tech | 54 | 100 | 154 |
| 9 | University of Chicago | 2 | 150 | 152 |
| 10 | University of Pennsylvania | 140 | 0 | 140 |
The biggest surprise for me personally was that a school that I wouldn’t have even put in the top 8 before I started MLH is actually holding the lead right now. And that’s not luck. The kids atCarnegie Mellon University have really proven themselves this semester. Some strong wins at PennApps and MHacks gave them an early lead and the fact that they have the second highest attendance this season sealed the deal.
Scoring Notes & Changes
The hardest part of compiling the stats was figuring out what school each hacker attended. Often, hackers submit their apps with a non-school email or their nickname, so even if I have the official registration it can be hard to pull together. I spent a lot of time triple checking myself to make sure this was as accurate as possible, but I’m not 100% satisfied. I’m working with the organizers board to get better next semester.
Another issue we noticed was that the home school had a substantial advantage with respect to attendance points. For example, Penn is in the top 10 teams even though they haven’t earned any merit points yet. The board has unanimously decided to modify the rules to award hackers 1 attendance point if they complete a hack at their home school and 2 attendance points if they complete a hack at a school they traveled to. We think this will encourage hackers to travel to other schools events and keep things fair.
The Road Ahead
There are still two events left this season and it’s still really anyone’s game. I’ll be working really closely with the organizers from MIT and Rutgers to get the stats out in a timely fashion. I’ll also be posting the exact break down by event over the next few days so you can dig deeper into how those scores came to be.
Happy hacking everyone!
– Swift (@SwiftAlphaOne)