Poles leading in the Top Coder ranking

Poland has just left the US behind and taken first place in TopCoder's country ranking. The first place ranking of Warsaw University is no surprise - the school has been number one since February. There are three more Polish universities in the top 25 school worldwide: University of Wroclaw, (13th place), Jagiellonian University, (14th place) and Poznan University of Technology, (21st place). Ranking is based on the performance of the best students from each school.

Warsaw University has outperformed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and California Institute of Technology. TopCoder consists in fact of two rankings - individual and university levels. Poles are leaders in both!

TopCoder programming competitions take place every week. At least once a year a huge tournament with onsite finals is held. TopCoder, Inc, the company that runs the competitions, has given out over $2 Million in prizes, including $1.3 Million in tournaments and $800,000 in weekly online competitions since its beginning four years ago.

These successes are the result of very good system of teaching mathematics as well as Polish traditions in this field. Mathematics, IT and Mechanics faculty at the Warsaw University teaches according to the best international standards and thus it allures young and talented people from all over the country. In the 2004/2005 academic year the IT faculty took on 110 persons, out of which 49 won numerous competitions and thus they did not have to pass exams.

source: www.paiz.gov.pl, www.topcoder.com