chennai a touch of smart and sophisticated computer programming at an international competition has earned three students from sri sankara senior secondary school adyar a cash award of 500 each b srivatsan m bharath and s r subramaniam now in class xii were one of the five teams to qualify for the event from 10 countries including australia hong kong and taiwan organised by the south east asia regional computer confederation the firm is made up of computer societies from each of the member countries it was indias turn to host the competition this year we at the computer society of india csi prepared a very tough question paper on c and c even an average be student would find it hard to solve these problems as they require a special application of mind and the interest to solve such sums said professor n ramanathan director csi education directorate chennai after enrolling for the event the boys from sankara school said they spent a lot of time preparing for the competition even though they were in class xii we would stay back after school to discuss papers or to work on the internet for the finals we were given two hours to code four programmes the ranking was decided based on whether we managed to solve the problems and how fast we did it he added his team mate srivatsan who bagged the bronze medal for the country at the international informatics olympiad in cairo earlier this year was awarded a scholarship by the kishore vaigyanik protsahan yojana a programme under the department of science and technology of the central government for his achievement according to subramaniam however the team followed simple logic to find the solutions after examining the question we made a few observations tried to see a pattern and checked if it added up he said though the team put up an admirable performance they came up five points short of the tally set by the australian team