On Friday, April 28, Cherry Hill High School East’s Computer Science Club competed in the annual Rowan University Programming Contest. Out of 30 teams competing, two of East’s teams placed. Together, Eric Ji (‘23) and Max Veksler (‘24) came in 1st and Pranav Palle (‘23) and Max Green (‘23) placed 3rd. 

The Computer Science Department of Rowan University invites high school programmers in the Philadephia area, which includes New Jersey, Delaware and southeastern Pennsylvania.

Led by club advisor Mr. Dilks, four East teams consisting of two students, competed in the 34th Annual Rowan University Programming Competition.

Although East has attended – and won – the competition in the past, this was the club’s first year back since 2019 after the 2020, 2021 and 2022 competitions were canceled due to COVID-19. As this was the first time back in many years, the competitors were pleasantly surprised by their success.

“We went in with the expectation of doing okay so that the club can return to its high level of success in the next few years, so doing as well as we did on Friday was a nice surprise,” said third-place winner Max Green.

In the competition, the teams were tasked to create a code based on a detailed description of a program. They were given two and a half hours to write the code, building the program they described from scratch. The code was judged on its readability, how well it met the instructions and how well it performed the desired task.

The club met multiple times to prepare, practicing solving previous years’ competition problems and reviewing them in order to improve. 

“Now that we have set the bar very high again, we hope that next year’s students will be able to use our code as a resource to practice for next year and possibly win again,” said Green.