Reflecting on Google Code-in 2018

Google Code-in (GCI), our contest introducing 13-17 year olds to open source software development, wrapped up last December with impressive numbers: 3,124 students from 77 countries completed an impressive 15,323 tasks!

These students spent 7 weeks working online with 27 open source organizations, writing code, writing and editing documentation, designing UI elements and logos, conducting research, developing videos teaching others about open source software, as well as finding (and fixing!) hundreds of bugs.

Overview

  • 2,164 students completed three or more tasks (earning a Google Code-in 2018 t-shirt)
  • 17% of students were girls
  • 23% of the participants from the USA were girls
  • 79% of students were first time participants in GCI
  • We saw very large increases in the number of students from Austria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Taiwan

Student Age

Participating Schools

Students from 1,673 schools competed in this year’s contest. Many students learn about GCI from their friends or teachers and continue to spread the word to their classmates. This year the 5 schools with the most students completing tasks in the contest were:
School Name Number of Student Participants Country
Dunman High School 110 Singapore
Indus E.M High School 73 India
Sacred Heart Convent Senior Secondary School 69 India
Amity International School Sec-46 Gurgaon 36 India
Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan Vidyashram Pratap Nagar 27 India

Countries

We are pleased to have 9 countries with first time Winners and Finalists. Winners from Georgia, Macedonia, Philippines, South Africa and Spain, and Finalists from Israel, Luxembourg, Nepal and Pakistan.

The chart below displays the 10 countries with the most students completing at least 1 task.

What's Next

In June we will welcome all 54 grand prize winners to the San Francisco Bay Area for a fun-filled trip. The trip includes the opportunity for students to meet with one of the mentors they worked with during the contest. Students will also take part in an awards ceremony, meet with Google engineers to hear about new and exciting projects, tours of the Google campuses and a fun day exploring San Francisco.

We are thrilled that Google Code-in was so popular this year. We hope to continue to grow and expand this contest in the future to introduce even more teenagers to the world of open source software development.

Thank you again to the heroes of this program: the 789 mentors from 57 countries that guided students through the program and welcomed them into their open source communities.

By Saranya Sampat, Google Open Source