For some context, I'm a 5x Hack The North-er now (2022 - 2026) and have pretty much copy pasted the same responses for the last 4 applications.

This post has some of my general tips₁ on how to maximize your chances of getting accepted, but before I get into that, you first have to understand how the Hack The North organizers grade applications. You can find that in their Medium post breaking everything down here.

But if you're too lazy to read through that, this is quick summary:

#Criteria

Organizers look for 4 things:

1. Whether you actually "love" the stuff you build and whether you take initiative; can pretty much be anything you've made. Doesn't have to be "useful" or tech related.
2. Community; would you be good fit in theirs with either past community involvement or traits that would work in theirs.
3. Passion; do you like learning, making things, and the event and this is shown in how you work (collaborating, using resources, going all-in). Unique/non-tech stuff is fine.
4. Do you have the skills and the willingness to learn; beginners mainly just need to show they'll actually learn.₂

Every question has a rubric (bad / good / excellent), a 0–5 score, and a weight.

• Tech is judged from long answers plus GitHub, Devpost, Drive, portfolio, etc.
• Humans review everything and identifying information like names, school, age, photos are hidden (including a Chrome extension for LinkedIn).
• Applications are assigned at random. Reviewers can skip if they can’t be fair. Viewing personal data for eligibility (e.g. under 13, not a student) is logged.
• ~46 organizers, ~3 weeks, 7000+ apps. Marketing and travel organizer(s) don’t review.

To prevent bias, there's a bootcamp in place to train reviewers on sample applications, preventative measures from reviewing people you know, and all the scores also get normalized so harsh or lenient reviews don't screw people or over or inflate scores.

Your demographic info also doesn't change the score and isn't even shown unless there's a valid excuse to view it. It's only used for event planning. Admission is merit based + how much you'd get from the weekend.

#Tips

All tips are based on what I've written for the past 5 Hack The Norths, and what I've noticed about my friends who got accepted and ones who got rejected. Writing tips only apply to the one or two question(s) that are graded out of the two or three that Hack The North asks. Tips apply to all applicant experience levels.

#1. Review your responses₃

My first tip, and most important one is to review your application questions thoroughly. For the initial review, I recommend getting an LLM, preferably an "honest aligned"₄ one to review your application responses to see if your responses cover the criteria Hack The North mentions in the Medium blog as that's what you're getting graded on.

However, one thing to keep in mind is that you don't necessarily need to cover everything in the criteria because as long as you present yourself as an "enjoyable" person to be around, you should be fine and have a decent shot. More into that in 2 and 4.

#2. Don't be like that "one group of people in sf/waterloo"

Don't present yourself as "that specific group of people in sf/waterloo" type vibe; prestige whore, pretentious, egotistical, flexer, social climber, all the bad parts of sf culture.

Historically, the only question graded on your Hack The North application is a question in the form of: "Tell us about one of your passion projects that you've designed or built, an initiative you organized that you're proud of, or some other type of passion you have." (a mixture of the same question written slightly different asked in the last 5 years)

This tip is pretty obvious just thinking logically, and even more if you read the blog post. They're literally looking for people who have a genuine passion for the project they talk about their response. I highly recommend avoiding talking or boasting about yourself and how you won XYZ unless it's relevant for context (let's say one of your passions is research and your dream was presenting at ISEF or some other research conference) and instead focus on the "journey" aspect of why and how you built that project and then try to relate that to the criteria Hack The North is looking for.

A general format I've noticed about accepted applications is it looks something like this (in their own voice):

• 1 sentence of what they did/what they're going to talk about
• 2-3 sentences of why they did it; inspiration for the project, some background context
• 3-4 sentences of how they built it, challenges, and what they learned
• 3-4 sentences wrapping it up; why you were proud of the project, what you managed to accomplish, any type of community aspect (maybe it helped out friends or family, etc.) and any other details you think worth putting. You could even squeeze in here about how you got to present your work at X research conference, or won Y hackathon. This is a better place to say it, since it doesn't make you seem like you're only passionate about it, because you won.

And last part, if you're unsure of which project to talk about, I recommend talking about a project that you are actually proud of or had a lot of fun building let's say with a friend. Don't just talk about a hackathon project where you built using random startups API because you won $XXXX.

Also don't treat this like a U.S. college application just get to the point and talk about your passion project.

#3. Don't use AI

Slightly misleading, but don't use AI to generate your responses to the questions, completely fine to get it to grade it. It'll make it more authentic and less boring to read. Try to also make your application also "fun" to read, the people reading and grading your applications aren't being paid for it so don't just submit some bullshit.

#4. Eye test your responses

Overlap with 1 and 2, but you should read your own application responses and ask yourself if you would want to work with "this person" in a non-competitive setting. A lot about Hack The North is having fun and doing random shit with people you just met during the weekend and even though the application is only a couple hundred words and you can't deduce someone's character from it, you shouldn't present yourself as a pain in the ass to be around (similar to point 2).

#5. Make your projects easy to view

Just my opinion but objectively correct, but I think projects where someone can interact with or see a demo of what you've built are best. Any live links, video demos in the Github repo or Drive or whatever you submit for your application would help a lot. Don't recommend projects where you need to have some domain knowledge to understand what's going on because how would they grade you then. Just an opinion though.

#6. Do anything to get in

This is more for recent years (2025+), but if there's an alternative way of getting an acceptance to the hackathon like a CTF, definitely give it a shot.

For CTFs, since that seems to be the only alternative way to get in so far, I recommend just getting some Computer Use agent (I recommend Codex) to do the ones that require writing and running scripts, for the ones where you kind've have to analyze a special code in an image (2026 CTF, THE ART SPEAKS) that an AI wouldn't really spot (I could be wrong about that one but point still stands) by running a script or analyzing the image, you unfortunately have to do it yourself, but they're pretty straight forward if you read between the lines in the instructions and just think about it.

You could also try bribing an organizer but I don't think anyone except the tech team and even then has the power to do that.

---

that pretty much sums up my tips everything else is luck if you get rejected blame everything but yourself never take accountability

you can also just sneak into the hackathon pretty easily or just do the mentor pipeline