Live coaching · ages 11–18
Give your kid problems
with no answer key.
Ascendo coaches middle and high schoolers in competitive programming, the sport behind USACO and the informatics olympiads. Three hours a week, live, taught by an ICPC gold medalist, starting from wherever your kid is today.
The intro call is free · $66 a week after, billed weekly · 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 kid 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 kid 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 kid'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 kid sees exactly how many they solved, and so do you.
Who teaches it
I started competitive programming as a teenager who was bored in class and stayed for the problems. It took me to an ICPC gold medal and a medal at the Egyptian Olympiad in Informatics. I teach the thing I'd have wanted at thirteen: someone who takes the problem seriously, and takes you seriously for trying it.
- ICPC
- Gold medalist
- EOI
- Olympiad medalist
- Teaching since
- 2021
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 kid'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.
Free 10-minute call · or email us instead
What it costs
Two live sessions a week, a small group, and problems set between them. That works out to $33 a session. Billed weekly, starting before the first session. Cancel any time.
The intro call is free and takes 10 minutes.