Before leaving Tehran I asked SeMeKh a couple of questions on how the training for the competitions works in Iran.
There are local and regional Olympiads in Informatics in Iran which take place across the whole country. Top 40 winners will get together in so-called Golden Camp and train the whole summer, with a break of 2-3 weeks in Ramadan, so the camp duration exceeds 2 months. Part of the participants with lowest scores leave the camp earlier. The rating of participants is classified as either gold, silver, or bronze. "Golden" participants get the right to enter any university in the country without Concur. The 4 participants of IOI are also selected from the "gold" category. Please note, that there is no national Olympiad in Informatics. — see note below.
Iranian competitors achieved following results in the International Olympiad in Informatics:
- 2012, Italy — two gold (mR.ilchi, havaliza), two silver (LGM, mruxim) medals.
- 2011, Thailand — three silver (including SeMeKh and sajad22), one bronze (kasnavi) medal.
- 2010, Canada — gold (a70babat), two silver (Mehrdad, SeMeKh), one bronze medal.
- 2009, Bulgaria — gold (a70babat) and three silver (including pooya_, Solej) medals.
- 2008 — unfortunately, Egypt didn't grant visas to the team of Iran.
- 2007, Croatia — gold and three silver (including Saeed_Reza) medals.
As you can see, results are very high, all 4 pupils normally get medals, there is often a gold one. Many organizations support and organize high school students for comptetion, which is unfortunately not the case with university students. I have not heard of a well-organized system of training for ACM ICPC in the country. Hopefully, the situation with support from universities, government and business will change, and I suspect it is a local business who will initiate the change.
There were not enough time to discover more details, so I will be happy to here rich comments from Iranians on the topic as well as tough questions from everyone interested.
UPD. Please see important comment from A.K.Goharshady below.
UPD 2. Here are some numbers from inoi.ir. There are about 10000 participants in the first stage. About 1000-2000 qualify to the second stage, which is a two-day event which includes multiple-choice test and a kind of examination. Some 60-70 people go to the stage where they solve problems using a computer, 35-40 summer camp participants will be selected here. There are 8 gold medalists at the camp, 4 of which will then take part in IOI.
The only thing left from Iranians' comments is a huge thank for what you done, during these recent days
ignore it
a70babat is handle of ali babaei who is iranian double gold medal winner in ioi ( years 2009/2010 )
By the way thanks for your great posts and live coverage of bayan contest. you make a great work for iran informatics olympiad community.
Thanks, added.
Two other IOI medalists on CF:
2009 — Silver — Solej
2011 — Bronze — kasnavi
I think there's a misunderstanding here.
There is only ONE single "National" Olympiad in Informatics in Iran. (website)
It has several stages. Stage 1 and 2 are organized in the centers of our 31 provinces (In the same time and with the same tasks). This is why they're usually misunderstood as being regional — They are not regional because no region has a fixed number of advancing participants and getting accepted has nothing to do with your region.Then some 1000 participants (from all over the country) get to Stage 2 and then some 60 are accepted for Stage3 which is organized at the Capital (Tehran). Then comes the camp and ...
More info can be found here. (in Persian)
Thank you for clarifying this.
Edit: see next comment!
if you check results of Tehran Regional in last 3 years, you can see amazing conclusions:
2012: champion team have 2 IOI medalist. (mR.ilchi, haas, LGM)
2011: no IOI medalist in champion team. (poopi, piloop, Mohammad_JRS)
2010: no IOI medalist in champion team. (poopi, piloop, Mohammad_JRS)
Yeah! Iran has a lot of genius programmers!