Dates

  • Registration opens: September 25th
  • Hackathon kickoff: October 20th-27th, case studies released, one week window begins
  • Submission deadline: October 27th, 11:59 AM CST
  • Winners announced: November 5th

Eligibility

CodeForDFW is open to all high school students residing in or attending school in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. Both underclassmen and upperclassmen are welcome.

Project and Submission Requirements

Each participant selects one sponsor-submitted case study and builds a technical solution addressing it over the hackathon window. Submissions must include:

  • Executive Summary (1–3 pages)
  • Live demo/URL or clear run instructions
  • 1–2 minute demo video (YouTube or Vimeo)
  • Disclosure of any generative AI tools used

Prizes

Information coming out soon. Stay tuned!

 

Judging Criteria and Winner Selection

One winning team will be selected from each difficulty tier (Easy, Medium, and Hard) based on the case study they chose. Submissions are evaluated by an outside panel using the rubric below, tailored to each case study's specific problem statement.

Problem Understanding (25%):

Does the solution demonstrate a clear grasp of the sponsor's actual problem? Did the participant correctly identify the underlying issue in the case study, rather than a surface-level interpretation of it? Strong submissions show evidence that the participant understood the business context, not just the technical ask.

Technical Execution (25%):

Is the solution functional, and how well was it built? This includes code quality and organization, appropriate choice of tools/technologies for the problem, whether the solution actually runs/works as demonstrated, and how much was accomplished within the time window relative to the difficulty tier.

Practical Viability (20%):

Could the sponsoring business realistically adopt, integrate, or build on this solution? Judges will weigh whether the solution respects real-world constraints (cost, technical skill needed to maintain it, data the business actually has access to) versus being a technically impressive but impractical concept.

Creativity & Approach (15%):

Does the solution take an original or clever angle on the problem, rather than the most obvious fix? Judges are looking for participants who found a non-trivial insight into the case study.

Presentation (15%):

How clearly does the participant walk through their project? This includes the quality of the demo video and submission write-up, andm where applicablem, the participant's ability to explain their functions (frontend and backend), justify technical decisions, and answer questions about their own code. lt. A submission that's hard to follow or that the participant can't explain will be scored down here regardless of how polished the final product looks.

Judges score each submission independently within its assigned tier (Easy, Medium, or Hard) rather than against submissions in other tiers, since scope and difficulty differ by design. The highest-scoring submission in each tier is declared the tier winner.