National Probability Challenge: Techfest's Quant Competition
National Probability Challenge: Jane Street's Probability Competition at Techfest IIT Bombay
Most quantitative finance competitions ask you to code. The National Probability Challenge (NPC) asks you to think.
Hosted by Techfest, a student-led event organised by IIT Bombay and Asia's largest science and technology festival, the NPC is sponsored by Jane Street. The NPC is a national quantitative reasoning competition built around mathematical intuition, probabilistic reasoning, and quantitative problem‑solving. It's designed to mirror the analytical thinking and decision‑making expected on a quantitative trading floor, without requiring a single line of code.
If you're a student in India with a taste for probability puzzles, expected value calculations, and brain‑teasers under time pressure, this is one of the most direct routes into the quant world available to you.
Important: Round 2 of the competition, i.e. its Grand Finale is open only to participants with a valid student ID from an Indian educational institution.
What Is the National Probability Challenge?
The NPC is a two‑stage competition:
- Stage 1 — Preliminary Screening: An individual, 60‑minute test covering probability, combinatorics, and mathematical reasoning. Conducted online (via HackerEarth) or offline as a pen‑and‑paper exam at partner campuses.
- Stage 2 — The Finals: An on‑site final round held during Techfest at IIT Bombay, focused on advanced quantitative problem‑solving, real‑time decision‑making, and collaborative simulation challenges.
The competition is explicitly designed to mirror the kind of reasoning that quantitative researchers and traders use daily. No programming, no machine learning, no datasets — just mathematics, logic, and the ability to reason clearly when the clock is running.
The sponsorship by Jane Street is not incidental. The firm is one of the world's most respected quantitative trading firms, and its interview process is famous for probability puzzles and expected‑value problems. For a deeper look at how Jane Street fits into the broader landscape, see our guide to the top quant firms and how to break in.
Who Can Enter?
| Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| Eligibility | Open to all students with a valid ID from an Indian educational institution |
| Year of study | All years — no restriction |
| Stage 1 format | Individual |
| Stage 2 format | Teams of up to 3 members (teams may span different institutes) |
| Registration | Required at techfest.org |
| Registration deadline | 15 October 2026 |
If you're at an IIT, NIT, IIIT, or any other recognised Indian university, you're eligible. The individual format of Stage 1 means you don't need to assemble a team to enter — you only need one if you reach the finals.
Stage 1: The Preliminary Screening
Format
- Duration: 60 minutes
- Questions: 15–20, spanning multiple difficulty levels
- Mode (primary): Online via HackerEarth
- Mode (secondary): Offline pen‑and‑paper at specific partner campuses
- Participation: Individual
The two modes are designed to accommodate different campuses. If your college is a registered offline partner, you may sit the exam on campus. Otherwise, you'll take it online.
Two Test Sessions
Round 1 runs across two separate sessions on different days:
- Test 1: usually in mid October
- Test 2: usually in late October
You may attempt the test only once. If you sit Test 1, you are not eligible for Test 2. The sessions exist to give participants flexibility around scheduling conflicts, not to allow a second attempt.
The Syllabus
The question set is drawn from standard undergraduate probability and discrete mathematics. No knowledge beyond that is assumed. Topics include:
- Basic probability
- Conditional probability and Bayes' theorem
- Counting principles and combinatorics
- Discrete and continuous random variables
- Standard distributions (Binomial, Geometric, Uniform, Normal)
- Expectation, variance, and linearity of expectation
- Indicator variables
- Simple game‑theoretic and expected value problems
- Basic logical reasoning and quantitative thinking
If you've studied quantitative finance interview preparation before, this list will look familiar. It's essentially the core of the "Green Book" curriculum — the problems that Jane Street, Citadel, and other top firms use to screen candidates.
Scoring and Permitted Materials
Questions may carry different weights based on difficulty, and the exact weightings will be announced during the round. Responses must match the accuracy specified in each question.
For Round 1 only, you may use a scientific or non‑programmable calculator. No books, notes, other electronic devices, or external assistance are permitted.
Stage 2: The Finals at Techfest
Shortlisted candidates advance to the on‑site final round, held during Techfest at IIT Bombay which usually takes place in December.
The finals shift format entirely. According to the organisers, the round focuses on:
- Advanced quantitative problem‑solving
- Real‑time decision‑making under pressure
- Collaborative simulation challenges mirroring high‑stakes trading floors
Where Stage 1 tests individual reasoning, the finals introduce teamwork and time pressure. This mirrors how quantitative trading actually works: a single well‑reasoned answer is valuable, but the ability to make fast, calibrated decisions alongside other people is what separates good candidates from great ones.
Finalists must present valid ID cards and provide a copy for verification.
Note on qualification numbers: The competition documentation describes qualification in two ways. The Qualification Criteria section states that the top 5 students from each registered offline college and the top 50 online participants globally advance to the finals. The timeline section instead references top 25 teams per slot (50 teams total) advancing. If you're aiming for the finals, check the Techfest Competition Portal for the definitive rule before Round 1.
How to Prepare
The syllabus is bounded and well‑known, which makes focused preparation highly effective. Here's a practical approach:
1. Master the Core Concepts
Work through the syllabus systematically. If any topic feels shaky — Bayes' theorem, indicator variables, or linearity of expectation — fix that first. These concepts appear repeatedly in quant interviews because they're foundational.
2. Drill the Classic Problem Types
The NPC is likely to draw from well‑established problem categories:
- Coin flips and dice games — expected value of stopping rules
- Urn problems — conditional probability and Bayes
- Card problems — combinatorics with constraints
- Birthday and matching problems — indicator variables and linearity
- Betting and game‑theoretic puzzles — optimal strategies under uncertainty
- Distributional questions — identifying and applying standard distributions
3. Practise Under Time Pressure
Sixty minutes for 15–20 questions means roughly 3–4 minutes per problem. Some will be quick; others will demand real thought. Practise with a timer so you develop a sense of when to commit and when to move on.
4. Study the Standard Resources
If you want structured material, the following are widely used by quant candidates:
- A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews (the "Green Book")
- Fifty Challenging Problems in Probability by Mosteller
- Heard on the Street by Timothy Crack
- Any solid undergraduate probability textbook for foundational review
We cover the essential reading list in more depth in our guide to the best books for quants.
5. Treat It Like Interview Prep
The skills the NPC tests are the same skills Jane Street, Citadel, Optiver, and IMC test in their interviews. Preparing for the NPC is, quite literally, preparing for a quant interview. If you're serious about this career path, the overlap is nearly total.
Why This Competition Matters Beyond the Prize
The NPC offers something that coding‑heavy competitions don't: a pure test of reasoning. There's no environment to debug, no data pipeline to build, no model to tune. You either see the structure of a problem or you don't.
That's exactly the filter that top quant firms apply. And because Jane Street is the sponsor, a strong performance here is a meaningful signal — not just a certificate.
If you're building toward a quant career and want to broaden your competition portfolio, see our overviews of the top algorithmic trading competitions and top quant hackathons and data science competitions. And for a direct look at the firm behind the NPC, our breakdown of the Jane Street Kaggle competition covers another route into the same building.
Key Takeaways
- The National Probability Challenge is hosted by Techfest, IIT Bombay and sponsored by Jane Street.
- It is open only to students with a valid ID from an Indian educational institution.
- Stage 1 is an individual, 60‑minute test on probability, combinatorics, and quantitative reasoning, held online or offline at partner campuses.
- Stage 2 is an on‑site final at Techfest (16–18 December 2026), with team‑based, simulation‑style challenges.
- Registration closes 15 October 2026 at techfest.org.
- You can only attempt one of the two Round 1 sessions.
- The skills tested are the same skills top quant firms screen for — making this excellent interview preparation in its own right.
Competitions like the NPC sharpen the reasoning muscle. Competitions like ours sharpen the modelling muscle.
Join the latest AlphaNova competition — a walk‑forward, cross‑sectional signal forecasting challenge with a $50,000 prize pool, pure Python, and no staking. Test your models on obfuscated financial data and see if your signals survive the same rigorous checks that filter out over 97% of submissions.