Eligibility

  • All participants must be between the ages of 14 and 19 and enrolled in high school or the international equivalent (if you graduated high school within the last month, you are still eligible).

  • All project submissions must be submitted by a team composed of 2-4 members. Solo projects, or projects exceeding 4 team members, will not be considered.

  • All members of a team must have registered for the hackathon using the submission form on our website prior to May 21st. All information submitted through this form will be kept confidential, but must be complete, true, and accurate. You, and possibly your team, may be disqualified if it is discovered to be otherwise.

  • International students (outside of the U.S. and its territories) are highly encouraged to participate! Unfortunately, they will not be eligible for any swag that requires shipping, though they can still receive hundreds of dollars worth of free software!

 

Teams/Projects

  • Teams may be formed ahead of the official team formation period, which will take place after opening ceremonies on the morning of May 21st.

  • You may begin to brainstorm what your project might look like before the hacking period (which begins 10 am EDT on May 21st), but you may NOT begin writing code which will contribute to your project.

  • This year, all teams must submit a video demonstration in the range of 2-5 minutes which explains the project to the judges. You may also provide project code, screenshots, written descriptions, etc.

  • We encourage you to submit whatever you have been working on; it’s alright if it is not 100% completed! However, note that Technical Accomplishment will be considered as 25% of the overall project score, so it is advised to pick a project with a reasonable scope for a 24-hour hackathon.

  • You are permitted to use outside resources like Stack Overflow to help you overcome any hurdles you may encounter, but copying numerous lines of code is considered cheating and will be dealt with severely.

 

Judging

  • Judges will consider four criteria, weighted equally: Design, Creativity, Technical Accomplishment, and Social Impact.

  • The decision of the judges will be fair, impartial, and final.

  • All submitted work must be your own! Cheating (including, but not limited to: writing code prior to the hacking period, collaborating with more than 3 other teammates, excessive code plagiarism) will be discovered and dealt with severely. Following other disciplinary consequences, we reserve the right to disqualify your project and revoke any prizes/awards your project may have received.

  • Your project must have been specifically created for High Tech Hacks. Please state or include "This project was created for High Tech Hacks 2022" in an easily visible area of your submission.

 

Observe the MLH Code of Conduct: http://mlh.io/code-of-conduct