Ascendo()

Live coaching · ages 11–18

Coding coaching with results colleges can check.

Competitive programming — the sport behind USACO and the informatics olympiads. Three hours a week, live, taught by ICPC and olympiad medalists.

Book a free 15-minute intro calland get your free Competitive-Programming Roadmap

The intro call is free · $35 a session after · cancel any time

A young mind is a river before it finds its banks.

88%

of US International Olympiad in Informatics team members went on to MIT, Harvard, or Princeton.

59%

went to MIT alone, at a school that admits under 5% of everyone who applies.

Where it leads

A straight line from wherever your student is now to a college application.

Most extracurriculars end in a certificate nobody checks. This one ends in results that are public and externally judged.

Where your student starts is not fixed. A beginner starts with their first working program. One who already competes skips to what is still hard. We work that out on the intro call.

USACO Bronze through Platinum

The US national olympiad ladder. An externally judged division that goes straight onto an application.

A public Codeforces rating

Live rated rounds against the world, and a number anyone can look up and watch climb.

National olympiad rounds and camp

For students who get there, the selection rounds that feed national teams and the international olympiads.

What actually happens

Three hours a week, and none of it is a lecture.

A group at your student's level

Four to six students, matched by ability. Beginners and rated competitors are grouped separately, so nobody is bored and nobody is lost.

One hard problem, taken apart

We read it together, argue about the idea, then write the code. Every solution is checked against real test data, not marked on effort.

Homework that keeps score

Problems on a real online judge between sessions. Your student sees exactly how many they solved, and so do you.

Why it carries weight

The extracurricular a CS department already knows how to read.

The result is a number, not a recommendation

USACO divisions, olympiad placements, and Codeforces ratings are public and externally judged. Nobody has to take your student's word for it.

It maps onto the majors with the hardest odds

Computer science is the hardest thing to get into at MIT, CMU, Stanford, and Berkeley. This is the activity those departments recognise on sight.

It compounds for years, not one summer

A student who starts at twelve reaches applications with four years of rated contests behind them. That is a track record, not a summer program.

What it costs

$35a session

Two live sessions a week, a small group, and problems set between them. Tax included — the price is the same wherever you are. Cancel any time.