Submission Policy

All homework submissions must be typed and submitted to Gradescope by 11:59 pm Pacific Time on the due date. As a rule of thumb, we will not be accepting or grading any handwritten submissions (however, for the first homework, we will be lenient and accept handwritten submissions by deducting 5%). After the first homework, we will NOT be accepting or grading any handwritten submissions so please make sure you plan accordingly (there will be no exceptions to this policy starting from homework 2). We highly recommend using LaTeX, and we will be posting the LaTeX source code of the homework assignments so you can borrow the LaTeX code from the problem statements. Homeworks 1-3 will be individual submissions, which means that students should type up their own homework. From homework 4 onwards, paired submissions are permitted, so students can make a single submission for groups of size up to 2.

Late Day Policy

You will have a total of 6 late days to use on homework assignments with a maximum of 2 late days on a single assignment. Each late day can be treated as a 24-hr extension; e.g., if the assignment is due Wednesday at 11:59 pm Pacific Time, you may hand it in by Thursday at 11:59 pm and use one late day, or by Friday at 11:59 pm and use two late days. You are responsible for keeping track of your late days. No credit will be given for homework turned in after 48 hours past the due date, or for late homework after all late days have been used.

• The point of late days is to give you flexibility to deal with extenuating circumstances (illness, travel, etc). Do not ask for an extension if you have extenuating circumstances; this is what late days are for.
• If you join the class late, you will receive a zero on any missed homework assignments.

OAE students with assignment accommodations: Please note that for HW 4 and HW 8, we will only allow up to 2 extension days so that we can release the solutions in a timely manner to prepare for the exams happening in the following week.

For all other OAE policy/information, please Accommodations section below.

Regrade Policy

You may submit a regrade request for homework on Gradescope. Please include a thorough description of the error that the grader made. You must submit a regrade request within 1 week of receiving your grade, by end of day (i.e. 11:59 pm). Some notes:

• We reserve the right to regrade the entire assignment on a regrade request. This means you may lose more points on other problems if we discover grading errors in the other direction.
• Your regrade request will go to the CA who graded your work originally and the instructor.
• Legitimate regrade requests include:
  • The points were not added correctly.
  • The comments say I’m missing part (c), but it was actually on a different page.
  • The comments say that my algorithm is incorrect with this particular case, but I implemented my algorithm and it does work in that case.
• Illegitimate regrade requests include:
  • I disagree with the rubric; I should have gotten more partial credit for my solution.
  • I understand that my solution wasn’t clear, but what I meant to say was correct.

Collaboration Policy and Honor Code

The homework assignments will have two sections: Exercises and Problems. We recommend that you complete the Exercises on your own (but if you happen to chat about them with other CS 161 students that’s okay; please acknowledge your collaborators). Your pair must type up your own solutions from scratch (and without referring to written notes from the study group session; only one solution needed per pair) and for each problem you must list the students you collaborated with. In other words, each student must understand the solution well enough in order to reconstruct it by him/herself.

• The following is OK: You and your friend work through the problems together over a couple of days. You bounce ideas off each other, and eventually come up with a pretty good solution idea. You sit down at your computer and type up that idea in your own words, perhaps lightly consulting notes you took while working with your friend.
• The following is NOT OK: You and your friend work through the problems together over a couple of days. You bounce ideas off each other, and eventually come up with a pretty good solution idea. Your friend types up their solutions first; since you helped come up with the answers, you use your friend’s write-up as a starting point for your own.

Here are a few of the examples of honor code violations:

• Looking at the writeup or code of another student (who is not paired with you).
• Showing your writeup or code to another student (who is not paired with you).
• Discussing homework problems in such detail that your solution (writeup or code) is almost identical/ or showing high similarity to another student’s answer.
• Uploading your writeup or code to a public repository (e.g. github, bitbucket, pastebin) so that it can be accessed by other students. - if you are aware of any, please alert the teaching team.
• Looking at solutions from online repository or previous years’ homeworks
• Collaborating with others during exams.
• Entering homework questions into any software, apps, or websites. Accessing resources that directly explain how to answer questions from the actual assignment or exam is a violation of course policy.

We will be using plagiarism detection software. If we have reason to believe that you are in violation of the honor code, we will follow the university policy to report it to the Office of Community Standards.

• The Stanford Honor Code
• The Stanford Honor Code as it pertains to CS courses

LLM Policy

• It is a violation of the honor code to copy-paste the output of an LLM into your homework, just as it is not allowed to copy another group’s write-up. Everything you hand in should be in your group’s own words.
  • Exception: You are allowed to use an LLM to correct your LaTeX syntax on problem sets (even if it involves copying and pasting LLM output), so long as it is not generating/modifying the substance of your solution.
• LLMs are not allowed on the exams. It is a violation of the honor code to use LLMs, or any other resource other than your cheat-sheet, during the exams.
• For the purposes of this class, we strongly recommend ignoring LLMs and coming to office hours or posting on Ed for help. Why? Employers increasingly value candidates who understand fundamentals deeply, have strong reasoning skills, and can work with AI (as opposed to being replacable by AI). If you rely on AI too early, you won’t develop reasoning skills and you’ll struggle in real-world problem solving. Using LLMs to help you with the problem sets will put you at a serious disadvantage during job interviews, which increasingly test problem-solving live to evaluate who truely understands the fundamentals and who is copying from an LLM (companies don’t need the latter). Moreover, using LLMs to solve the problem sets will set you up for failure on the exams.

Accommodations/OAE

Students who may need academic accommodations based on the impact of a disability should initiate the request with the Office of Accessible Education (OAE) and notify us as soon as possible (no later than the add-drop deadline). It is the student’s responsibility to reach out to the course staff regarding their accommodations on exams and assignments in advance. Please email OAE forms to CS161-STAFF-WIN2526@CS.STANFORD.EDU

General Guidelines:

• Contact the OAE to obtain an official accommodation letter if you have a health condition that may impact your coursework.
• Only accommodations explicitly stated in your current OAE letter will be accommodated. If you need additional or revised accommodations, you must request an updated letter from the OAE.
• If you have any questions or concerns regarding your accommodations, please contact your disability advisor.

Deadlines and Assignments:

• Students with OAE letters must request a separate extension for each assignment (you cannot auto-apply your OAE extensions).
  • Please note that for HW 4 and HW 8, we can only accommodate up to 2 extension days.
• Students with the standard OAE extension accommodation must request an extension before the original due date, as it says in your OAE letter. Retroactive extension requests will not be approved.
• The teaching team will only approve what is outlined in the OAE letter. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to your OAE advisor.

Exams: If you plan to use your OAE-approved exam accommodations for a specific exam, students must provide their letter and inform the instructor by:

• 10 calendar days prior to the relevant exam date.
• No later than March 2nd, 2026 at 5:00 pm, for accommodations on the final exam.

You only need to submit your letter once per quarter. For urgent OAE-related accommodation needs that arise after the deadline, please consult your OAE adviser. If you are not yet registered with OAE, contact the office directly at oae-contactus@stanford.edu.

Exam Policy

We will not accommodate Final exam conflicts since the date/time for Final exams are scheduled by the Registrar. All students enrolled in the course must be able to sit for the scheduled final exam.

• If you miss an exam, by default you will receive a zero on it.
• If you have an emergency (including illness) that means you have to miss an exam, please contact us via staff mailing list and explain your circumstances. We can’t promise to accommodate your emergency, but we will see what we can do. Please keep in mind that if you email us on exam day or the night before, the course staff will be busy with exam logistics and we may take a day or two to get back to you.