In an era where just about everything is dependent on technology, the US government has taken a significant interest in fostering technological innovation and skill development among K-12 students, like the DiscoverE program or the New York Hall of Science. 

A very interesting initiative under this umbrella is the Congressional App Challenge that encourages students to create and submit original apps to solve pressing problems in society.

If you’re a high school student with a passion for computer science and coding then keep reading to know more about the Congressional App Challenge!  

What is the Congressional App Challenge?

The Congressional App Challenge (CAC) was conceived in 2013, by leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Internet Education Foundation. This competition was solidified with the passage of the House Resolution 77 – Academic Competition Resolution of 2013, and aimed to foster an appreciation for computer science and STEM. Under this Resolution, House Representatives host an app challenge in their respective districts. This challenge is intended to be an opportunity for participants to demonstrate and showcase their apps. Each challenge is district-specific, but all the winners are publicly recognized and their apps may be put on display in the US Capitol for one year.

The CAC seeks to ignite creativity and participation in STEM fields, growing to become a prestigious competition in student computer science. Over its 8 years of existence, more than 9000 students have participated and it has been supported by 300+ members of Congress, making it one of the most successful innovation platforms for high school students in the country.

Is The Congressional App Challenge Prestigious?

In the last seven years, participation in the Congressional App Challenge has jumped from 2000 students to over 9000 students, across all 50 states, and supported by 335 members of Congress. It is considered the premier national coding challenge in terms of competition as well as exposure.

Aside from publicity obtained from winning at the district level, if you make it to the #HouseOfCode, you will get to directly pitch your app to Congressional Representatives, while also meeting industry leaders, technocrats, entrepreneurs and policy makers and have your submission showcased at Capitol Hill.

If you develop a great application and reach the finals, then the Congressional App Challenge is a very prestigious award to have on your profile as a computer science/coding enthusiast and will definitely give it a strong boost. 

Eligibility criteria for the Congressional App Challenge

To participate in the Congressional App Challenge, you must:

- Be a middle or high school student as on November 1, 2023.

- Reside or attend school in a participating congressional district - you can participate either in the district you reside in, or the one you attend school in. Here is a list of the participating districts.

- Either register solo or in a team of up to 4 people. At least half the teammates must attend school or live in the same district.

If your district isn’t participating or historically has not participated, then this may be an opportunity for you to showcase your initiative by submitting a form to your Congressional Representative to request them to participate!

Application, Submission, and Deadlines

The Congressional App Challenge application and submission process is simple and straightforward. For registration as an individual, you will need:

- a personal email address that is not your school email account

- home’s 9-digit zip code, Congressional District, and Member of Congress

- school’s 9-digit zip code, Congressional District, and Member of Congres

- A parent or guardian’s contact information (name and email address)

_ Name and email of your coding teacher or mentor (optional)

To register as a team, you’ll need:

- The above information for each team member.

Note that one team may only participate once as a group.

There is only one submission deadline - from June 15th to November 1, 2023 at 12:00 p.m. EDT. You MUST submit your application within this timeframe.

As for the application submission itself, it is straightforward:

- The submission is completely online

- You and/or your team will need to completely design and submit your app:

- It can be about any topic

- You can use ANY programming language - C/C++, Objective C, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, PHP, Swift, block code, etc.

- The app must be functional

- It must be original and your own intellectual property

- You will also need to submit a demonstration video that is at most 3 minutes long, contain name of each participant, name of app, one-line explanation of the purpose of the app, the target audience of the app, tools and coding languages used to create it, showing how the app works.

- Your application will also require you to answer a series of questions, similar to the following:

a. What is the title of your app?explain the app’s purpose in one sentence.

b. Short Description: What inspired you to create this app

c. Short Description: What is your app trying to accomplish?

d. What technical/coding difficulty did you face in programming your app, and how did you address this technical challenge?

You should thoroughly read the Rules Document on the website.

Competition Structure

What makes the Congressional App Challenge unique is that each District follows its own distinct structure for conducting the competition itself. While each representative will organize it the way they prefer, it’s common to see them follow a hackathon structure or host a demo day. Regardless of how the District competition is hosted, the winners from each will be judged by December 31, and the Congressional App Challenge will formally announce the national winners by the 15th of January.

You can expect your submissions to be judged on the following criteria:

1. Your submission demonstrates an understanding of programming skills

a. It should demonstrate strong coding skills in its development
b. It should be fully functional and ready for use


2. The quality of the idea

a. How creative is it?
b. How original is it?
c. Does it solve a problem? How creative is the solution?


3. Implementation of the app

a. How good is the UX and UI?
b. How coherent is the app design?

Fees and Prizes

The Congressional App Challenge is completely free of charge to participate in.

Winners are recognized by their Member of Congress and featured on the U.S. House of Representatives’ website. Winners are also invited to #HouseOfCode, a reception in Washington D.C. hosted by Congress, where winners will be invited to Capitol Hill to demonstrate their apps to the Representatives and the general public and have them displayed in the Capitol building.

Note: While there is no official cash prize from the CAC itself, Representatives can and do offer nominal prizes to winners from their respective districts.

Pros and Cons of participating in the Congressional App Challenge

Pros:

1. You will develop coding skills - The challenge takes you through the entire lifecycle of developing an application. This begins with identifying a problem statement,  and then working on the design, wireframe, and thinking through the UI/UX, backend and frontend development. While this isn’t easy, it is a very valuable skill set  to develop.You can be certain that after nearly 6 months of steadily working on your app, your coding skills and subject matter expertise will have drastically improved.

2. You will understand how teams/squads collaborate in tech - Teamwork  and collaboration is one thing, but they look different in different contexts - tech being an example! You and your teammates will have to divide the tasks amongst yourselves, work together, and build on your strengths while shoring your weaknesses. Your team is better off appointing one project manager to make sure they have an eye on the big picture, timeline, and quality of deliverables. 

3. You will attempt to solve real, complicated problems - Since one of the judging criteria is whether or not and how effectively your app solves a problem, you and your teammates will be incentivized to identify and solve actual challenges in your community. Some examples from previous winners that we really like are the app that aids the visually impaired, a Duolingo-like app for learning English, and an ingenious program that tells you the real sugar content of what you’re eating! 

4. You will gain exposure to the highest rungs of decision -making - Winners as well as participants will get to interact with their Congressional Representative, and winners will also attend one of the largest K12 computer science gatherings in the country, #HouseOfCode. Being one of the top participants in the Congressional App Challenge ensures that you will get to showcase your skill and talent to not only policy makers and members of government, but also some of the top coding minds judging the event.

5. You can potentially impact public policy - Aside from the representatives individually supporting their district challenges, the #HouseOfCode event itself is also attended by nearly 1,000 people. If your work is impactful, you will have ample chance to demonstrate both the issue you’ve raised and your solution, potentially impacting Congress’ approach towards policy.

6. You can participate for free - Being a government initiative, the challenge is completely free of charge, meaning you can try without worrying about entry fees, and even try again year after year if need be!


Cons:

1. You need to be committed - This is not a competition for the easygoing. With over 9000 students participating, you can be certain that competition will be tight and fierce. You will need to work steadily and continuously for the entire time between registration and submission if you want to stand a serious chance of winning. This will mean juggling school workload, while also having a consistent plan in place for your app development. In short, you and your teammates will need to be committed if you want to win.

2. Your district needs to be eligible to participate - The one thing you cannot influence beyond a point unfortunately is whether or not your district is participating. If it’s not, then beyond a request to your Congressional Representative there’s not much you can do about it and you will be unable to participate. To avoid disappointment, check the list of participating districts before considering applying.

3. If you are applying as an individual, it might be a lot of work for one person - While the Challenge does allow individual entries, note that this will mean that everything from ideation to back-end development to UI to debugging will fall on your shoulders. If your coding skills are not quite up to snuff, this can quickly overwhelm and lessen your chances of winning.

If you’re in middle school, you might be in for even tougher competition - The open and accessible nature of the challenge and the high stakes means that a lot of high school seniors will be applying. We recommend you team up with others rather than going solo, so that your relative lack of programming experience and exposure to advanced coding concepts does limit the quality of the submission or put you at a disadvantage. If you want to build your foundations in computer science, AI, and coding before you take part in the Congressional App Challenge, apply to the Veritas AI Trailblazers program. This is a course designed exclusively to teach middle school students the fundamentals of computer science through real-world and hands-on projects.

Tips to Win

With this level of competition, winning the Congressional App Challenge is no mean feat. Here are some tips to help you succeed:

1. Understand the rules and judgment criteria - Reading through and thoroughly understanding the rules and guidelines will help you focus your efforts and stay up to date and timely on your registration. Being clear on the judgment criteria will ensure that you spend your time focusing on aspects that improve your chances of winning.

2. See past winning projects - Go through submissions from previous winners thoroughly, especially those related to the areas that you are interested in. The idea itself doesn’t need to be something complex and novel,  it should solve an existing problem relevant to your district (people in general) and solve it well. Ake, for example,  -  Michael Ward’s Rhythm Reader, a very simple but intuitively functional app meant to help music learners practice rhythms. And if you ARE aiming to change the world, make sure you deliver the goods, like Ayush Nayak’s Optix app that uses a machine learning model paired with a phone camera to assist visually impaired viewers in navigating the world around them. What each winning project will show you is that it is the execution that matters. Take their ideas and understand how they executed them.

3. Choose a real and significant problem to solve - The more of an impactful change your app is able to make, the higher your chances of victory. Do thorough research about persistent but solvable issues in the world or in your local community. Work with a teacher or a mentor and your teammates to ideate feasible, actionable solutions that you can provide via an app. It doesn’t need to solve world hunger in one tap, but a concrete, measurable, positive difference towards a pressing need is what the judges are looking for.

4. Optimize between innovation & skill set - Not every problem will require finding brilliant new solutions. Sometimes, innovation is about delivering an intuitive, accessible solution to a common problem. Ask yourself at each step of app development, if you are overcomplicating it. If you look at the examples given above of Rhythm Reader or Utrition, they didn’t solve multiple large problems, they just focused exclusively on one small, relatable problem and offered users a simple solution.

5. Upskill before and during app development - The Congressional App Challenge is a marathon, not a sprint. From early registration starting in April to the submission in November, you and your team have plenty of time to work on your coding and programming skills. In fact, in 2022 35% of participants were not even coders when the competition began. The CAC provides a plethora of resources to help you learn the intricacies of coding. The skills we recommend you prioritize are:

1. Core programming - whether you choose Java, Python, Ruby or Swift, CAC’s resources including Khan Academy or theCoderSchool have you covered. Remember, different programming languages have their own strengths and weaknesses. Try to choose the language that will best align with the app that you have in mind. If you’re interested in learning python, check out this piece to learn about some great resources!

2. UI/UX design - the best app in the world won’t help if no one can use it. Take a course on MIT App Inventor or create a prototype on Thunkable and get used to how users will experience your design, how intuitive it will feel for them and how easy will it be for a first-time viewer to understand and use it.

3. Back-end computing - To ensure that your app is fully functional, it will need simplified back-end frameworks and be able to manage its own database. Practice on Apple or Scratch in building more robust and complex apps so you can understand and implement what it takes to maintain a robust back end.

6. Learn from peers & mentors - The more people you learn with, the deeper your learning will be. The CAC website provides a list of organizations and clubs that work with high schoolers who want to learn programming skills, creating communities and clubs that you can and should be a part of to test and broaden your skills. This will also potentially introduce you to mentors who will enrich your learning even further and provide you with valuable feedback and course correction during your app development journey.

7. Get a buy-in from your audience - Try to test your working prototypes with a sample of the intended audience. It could even be your friends, teachers or family members. The important thing is to have people other than the developers test the app and see if it’s usable and if it’s truly solving the problem it’s intended for. If you’re able to showcase in your final video that people are already using your app and deriving benefit from it, your chances of winning will go up exponentially. Not only that, the feedback your beta testers give you will be valuable for development.

8. Reiterate extensively - Again, the Challenge is a marathon and not a sprint. Even fully functional programs may contain unnoticeable bugs. So don’t stop with a single prototype. Test it, have others test it, incorporate feedback, debug, put out another version and do it all again. Ideally you should keep fine-tuning and debugging your app right up until the deadline and submit the best version you possibly can.

9. Tell a good story - While the Challenge emphasizes that this is not a video-making contest, it won’t harm you to clearly showcase your app as the hero of a story combating a villainous problem. Remember, the judges will be looking at hundreds, if not thousands, of entries and if you’re able to make your submission stand out, that will go a long way towards securing victory.

Let’s stay on this point a bit longer - why is this so important in an app development challenge? Just because you see a problem as significant does not mean that everyone you communicate the idea will think of it that way. A good story sets the context for why you’ve focused on this problem, who it is for and why the ‘user’ of the app should be using it.

Here’s an example of a past winner: Atmos Weather

Atticus Cornett, the participant who developed Atmos Weather, sounds confident and has a noticeable sense of purpose. That’s a great starting point for presenting the idea and getting people interested in it.

What’s great about the narrative? It recognizes, upfront, that there is currently a system in place called the Emergency Alert System, but it misses several weather-related notifications. This primes the audience to look out for how Atmos Weather is better or makes things easier.  It also talks about ‘who’ the app is for.

They have thought through the user problems in detail. Some of the ones we particularly enjoyed are listed below:

1. Tracking the weather across multiple locations.

2. The app tells the user how to respond after giving the alert - this is great user empathy.

3. Text to speech feature.

4. Choosing how important each type of weather event is to you and customizing the notification. Why is this important? Let’s say that the end user is a fisherman or a sailor, the type of weather they’d track would be very different from what a college student might track.

Our review and conclusions

If you’re a middle or high school student with a passion for coding and a robust skillset in it already, and your district is on the list of participants (or maybe even if it’s not), then you should not miss this challenge. It is a great challenge for anyone who is not only good at identifying a problem, but also solving it through coding.

The free entry makes it incredibly accessible, and the vast wealth of resources provided make it an approachable challenge even if you’re new to coding, as long as you’re determined. The rewards and recognition are stellar, and even if you don’t win, it’s an excellent opportunity to start your journey in the world of programming.

If you do not already have a background in coding, then unfortunately, this isn’t the challenge for you - yet!

If you’re looking to build unique projects in the field of AI/ML, consider applying to Veritas AI! 

Veritas AI was founded by Harvard graduate students, and through the programs, you get a chance to learn the fundamentals of AI and computer science while collaborating on real-world projects. You can also work 1-1 with mentors from universities like Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and more to create unique, personalized projects. In the past year, we had over 1000 students learn data science and AI with us. You can apply here!

Image Source: Congressional App Challenge Logo