Seriously, having competed in only 1 regional ICPC myself, I was blown away at the level of knowledge of some of the students. Some kids were coming in from high school with serious programming skills. Makes me sad when I go back to work now and never get to use any of these interesting algorithms.
Indeed, most of the top competitors have been practicing since high school. We were lucky to assemble a team that has been training well before.
MIT's team consists of freshmen who are still in good training since their national high school math olympiad trainings from their respective countries.
