Many Americans are unaware of the young minds around the globe who are competing and will complete with American graduates.  As Americans and as educators 0 globalization and technology expertise can not be taken lightly!

1  Zhejiang University

2  University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

3  Tsinghua University

4  St. Petersburg State University

5  Nizhny Novgorod State University

6  Saratov State University

7  Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg

8  Donetsk National University

9  Jagiellonian University in Krakow

10 Moscow State University

11 Ural State University

12 University of Waterloo

13 Carnegie Mellon University

13 Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

13 Lviv National University

13 Nanyang Technological University

13 National Taiwan University

13 Peking University

13 Shanghai Jiao Tong University

13 Sharif University of Technology

13 St. Petersburg State University of IT, Mechanics and Optics

13 Taurida V.I. Vernadsky National University

13 The Chinese University of Hong Kong

13 Universidad de Buenos Aires – FCEN

13 University of Warsaw

13 Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) University

27 Belarusian State University

27 Fudan University

27 Harbin Institute of Technology

27 Kazakh-British Technical University

27 Kyoto University

27 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

27 Novosibirsk State University

27 Perm State University

27 South Ural State University

27 Taras Shevchenko Kiev National University

27 Tianjin University

27 Universidade Federal de Pernambuco

27 University of Electronic Science and Technology of China

27 University of Helsinki

27 University of Tokyo

42 Beijing Jiaotong University

42 East China Normal University

42 Indian Institute of Technology – Delhi

42 International Institute of Information Technology – Hyderabad

42 Moscow Institute of Physics & Technology

42 Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

42 Princeton University

42 Seoul National University

42 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich – VIS

42 Universidad Nacional de Córdoba – FaMAF

42 Universidade Federal do Paraná

42 Universidade de São Paulo – Escola Politécnica

42 Universidade de São Paulo – Instituto de Matemática e Estatística

42 University of Alberta

42 University of Stellenbosch

42 University of Wroclaw

42 Wuhan University

These are the rankings for the top colleges from around the world that competed in the international Battle of the Brains.

From 2,070 universities in 88 countries, the top one hundred and three teams of students competed for bragging rights and prizes at The 35th Annual ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals sponsored by IBM on May 30, 2011, in Orlando Florida, USA, and hosted by IBM.

The contest pits teams of three university students against eight or more complex, real-world problems, with a grueling five-hour deadline. Huddled around a single computer, competitors race against the clock in a battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance.

Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds, and build software systems that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges. For a well-versed computer science student, some of the problems require precision only. Others require a knowledge and understanding of advanced algorithms. Still others are simply too hard to solve – except, of course, for the world’s brightest problem-solvers.

Judging is relentlessly strict. The students are given a problem statement – not a requirements document. They are given an example of test data, but they do not have access to the judges’ test data and acceptance criteria. Each incorrect solution submitted is assessed a time penalty. The team that solves the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least cumulative time is declared the winner.

To learn more about the ICPC, please visit http://acmicpc.org or http://icpc.baylor.edu/ . Visit the ICPC podcast series at http://battleofthebrains.podbean.com for insights from past contestants and current IBM executives.

* Sputnik was the first artificial satellite to be put in earth’s orbit.  On October 4, 1957 the Russian’s successfully place Sputnik in orbit.  I was 9 and I still remember it. Sputnik woke up America!!!