Blog

The challenge is over, the results have been checked and verified, and we're delighted to announce the winners of the Overleaf Campus Challenge 2016!

The winning institutions are:

• 1st Place Overall Winner: Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL)
• 2nd Place Overall Winner: Delft University of Technology (TU Delft)
• Regional Winners:
• Americas: Universidade de São Paulo (USP)*
• Europe: University of Twente (UTwente)**
• Asia: National University of Singapore (NUS)
• Africa: German University in Cairo (GUC)
• Oceania: University of New South Wales (UNSW)

*As UNAL won overall, the Americas regional prize is awarded to Universidade de São Paulo (who placed 2nd in Americas).
**As TU Delft won 2nd overall, the European regional prize is awarded to University of Twente (who placed 2nd in Europe).

Congratulations to everyone who took part! Members of all the universities listed above can now claim their free Pro accounts by clicking the link to the appropriate institutional portal on Overleaf. Individual departments who succeeded in the '80% challenge' will be contacted in the next week.

Capture the duck!

Universities worldwide rose to the Overleaf Campus Challenge to kick off 2016 with impressive results! What a showing! Throughout the first quarter of 2016 Overleaf users at over 10,000 institutions engaged in various duck-earning activities such as inviting friends, creating new projects, and linking to Mendeley, Zotero & Figshare accounts in an effort to earn a whole year of free Overleaf Pro accounts for their entire campus communities.

For the first couple of months, Delft University of Technology controlled the Global Leaderboard, but then, over one crazy weekend early in March, Universidad Nacional de Colombia rallied with a valiant flurry of activity and new enrollments to capture enough ducks to take the lead and ultimately secure first place! Great work Universidad Nacional de Columbia!

Additional highlights of the 2016 Campus Challenge include:

• Perhaps surprisingly (to us!), the 'invite a friend' achievement was not the main source of ducks. But if we combine the sign-up related actions ('invite' + 'enroll' + 'add role and department'), this covers the majority of the ducks earned during the challenge.
• The winner, Universidad Nacional de Colombia made a call to arms (using their #MyEFArmy hashtag) and therefore most of their points are invite-based.
• Other institutions that scored highly, such Stanford University, gained more points through a wider spread of actions, rather than through invites.

Thanks also to everyone who took part in the 'Capture the Duck' mini-contest and won a set of Overleaf ducks! Here are some great pictures you sent in:

Cute ducks just met with their new family! Thanks @overleaf ! pic.twitter.com/DGQoctNRBn

— Marie-Jean Meurs (@mjmrsc) March 24, 2016

@DrHammersley OMG!!! I thought this day will never come. Thanks a lot :D pic.twitter.com/BacGXbmJW3

— Sebastian Urzúa (@Sebanakin) March 19, 2016

@overleaf thank you for my gifts!!! pic.twitter.com/CxO9Z3gGoB

— Grace Weiss (@GraceWasse13) March 16, 2016

The Final Standings

You can see the final leaderboard standings here, with the top ten highlighted below:

The top ten institutions in the 2016 Overleaf Campus Challenge. See the full final leaderboard here.

Get ready for the Overleaf Campus Challenge 2017 when we offer another chance to win a free year of Pro for your whole institution! If you can't wait that long, head to our Overleaf for Institutions page to find out how your can get a license for your university:

Find out more about Overleaf for Institutions