The dim light of the computer lit up the organizer’s face as they furiously typed on their keyboard. In the corner of the screen lay the globally competitive hackathon’s prompt, fueling their team to email sponsors. Clicking the Zoom icon to attend the meeting, the organizer gives more information to the judges on the hackathon. All these became second nature to the high schoolers leading the ReverieHacks team as they planned their annual hackathon.
A hackathon is a timed event, often lasting 24 or 48 hours, in which individuals or teams develop innovative software or hardware to solve given problems. Unique from existing competitions, ReverieHacks is a student-led hackathon created with the mission of inspiring the future generation to think more creatively. It consists of six sections in which participants can compete in: ideathon, machine learning prompt engineering, software development, datathon, embedded systems, and application development.
“Something unique about our hackathons compared to [others] is [that] we have a track for people who can’t program,” Chief Operating Officer of ReverieHacks Ritvij Sharma ‘27 said. “What happens is we try and give everyone the opportunity to compete, even if they don’t know how to code.”
Striving to expand their participation, the ReverieHacks team decided to raise the stakes this year with new prizes. These new additions have led ReverieHacks to become one of the biggest student-led initiatives by Westwood students, attracting competitors from America all the way to Pakistan. The hackathon was not always this widespread, though. Last year, gaining participants was a challenge, since the prize was a Wolf Fern gift card.
“Last year, we didn’t have cash prizes, and as a result, we only had around 171 participants,” Sharma said. “We got way more participants this year, with us ending with 401 total submissions. We also have a new feature on our hackathon called Bounties, where if participants complete specific tasks [assigned] to them, they will receive smaller prizes like give cards and such.”
This year, the ReverieHacks team decided to award cash prizes up to fifty thousand dollars to attract more participants. To secure the funds for the large monetary prizes, the team emailed over 40 sponsors globally and hosted a fund within their group. Although it was challenging to raise this money, the team made a cash pool for all six tracks of coding to incentivize people to compete.
“The other issue was getting sponsors because you can’t find a lot [of sponsors for hackathons],” Chief Executive Officer of ReverieHacks Aditya Rayapeddi ‘27 said. “It was really hard getting them, but in the end, we managed to get a substantial price pool.”
The last day of the hackathon started with the opening ceremony, which was followed by the judges being given the projects to grade. Seeing the hackathon posted in Devpost, judges from various backgrounds came to judge in the hackathon.
“The judges all came back after [giving] feedback,” Rayapeddi said. “They said that it was a great experience judging the hackathon. They said they thought the projects submitted were really innovative.”
Hosting ReverieHacks wasn’t just a learning experience for the participants, but also for the student organizers themselves. From reaching out to sponsors to coordinating hundreds of submissions, the team gained valuable lessons in leadership, communication, and problem-solving that they now hope to carry into future projects.
“I would say that [we] get a lot of leadership experience and experience in collaborating and sort of getting in touch with businesses and individuals that you’ll probably use in the real world to get jobs and such,” Sharma said.
With this year’s growth, ReverieHacks aspires to continue expanding in both size and impact, inspiring more students worldwide to embrace innovation and creativity. Planning for next year’s hackathon is already underway, with the team aiming to make the event bigger, more inclusive, and more rewarding than ever.
“I’m really excited that those who participated really got to have a taste of what ReverieHacks is like,” Rayapeddi said. “Our intention is to inspire other high schoolers to do more and to think out of the box, and [we] hope that they keep innovating in the future.”
