Computer Science Competitions

Check out these working apps! Since 2013, our national-level winners have collaborated with the MIT App Inventor Group, a joint project of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and the MIT Media Lab, to transform their concepts into real mobile apps. Click each icon below to learn more. Then download the apps for free from the Google Play store and try them for yourself!

The Congressional App Challenge is open to students in high school or below, regardless of experience with coding. We highly encourage students to participate even if they’ve never coded before; the point is to learn something new!

The Games for Change Student Challenge is a game design competition that invites students to make digital games about issues impacting their communities.
Local Stories & Immigrant Voices – Make a game that explores the immigrant experience, comparing past and present. Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Make a game that teaches citizens how to prepare for our climate future. Supported by NOAA.
Future Communities – Make a game that shows how smart technology can make your community, school and neighborhood a better place to live, learn and play. Supported by Current, powered by GE.

The Computer Science Student Network (CS2N), a collaborative research project to increase the number of students pursuing advanced STEM degrees, hosts a variety of themed competitions for programming and robotics skills, with prizes!

Middle and high school students write programs to control satellites in space. After several phases of virtual competition, finalists in these Massachusetts Institution of Technology-sponsored tournaments compete in a live championship aboard the International Space Station. An astronaut will conduct the championship in microgravity with a live broadcast!

Google Science Fair is a global online competition open to students from 13 to 18 years old. What do you want to change?

Students 16 and older are eligible to enter Microsoft’s global competition by creating an original technology project from start to finish in one of three categories: games, innovation and world citizenship. Finalists get a free trip to Seattle, Washington, and winning teams in all three categories walk away with $50,000. Find out how student developers can join Microsoft Imagine, and elevate their skills with developer tools and resources.

eCYBERMISSION is a web-based science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) competition for students in
grades six through nine that promotes self-discovery and enables all students to recognize the real-life applications of STEM.
Teams of three or four students are instructed to ask questions (for science) or define problems (for engineering), and then
construct explanations (for science) or design solutions (for engineering) based on identified problems in their community.
Students compete for State, Regional, and National Awards.

The STEM Video Game Challenge hopes to motivate STEM learning by leveraging students’ natural excitement to play and make video games.

The Real World Design Challenge (RWDC) is an annual competition that provides high school students, grades 9-12, the opportunity to work on real world engineering challenges in a team environment. Each year, student teams will be asked to address a challenge that confronts our nation's leading industries. Students will utilize professional engineering software to develop their solutions and will also generate presentations that convincingly demonstrate the value of their solutions. The RWDC provides students with opportunities to apply the lessons of the classroom to the technical problems that are being faced in the workplace.

Every year Technovation invites girls around the world to learn and apply the skills they need to solve a community problem using technology.