Re: Student application process

[Thorsten]

Janek Warchoł <address@hidden> writes:

> On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 11:06 PM, Thorsten <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Andy Wingo <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>> Hi Andy,
>>
>>> On Sun 18 Mar 2012 17:31, Thorsten <address@hidden> writes:
>>>
>>>> Is that a two stage process:
>>>> 1. Students apply for proposals from indivuduals GNU projects, directly
>>>> communication with the project maintainers
>>>> 2. The maintainers of those projects select some students for their project
>>>> ideas and then transfer the student list to the GNU organisation that
>>>> decides about the final allocation of student slots
>>>
>>> Just as a voice from past SoC events:
>>>
>>> Students without a GNU project mentor will not be considered.  As such
>>> (1) is a necessary step.
>>>
>>> Input from maintainers is most important.  If Lilypond (for example)
>>> says "we want this project, then if we have space these other two", that
>>> consideration will be honored.
>>>
>>> The final slot count is pretty random and capricious.  A couple of years
>>> ago we had a lot of slots.  Last year we had very few.  This year will
>>> probably be in between; who knows.  Last year was quite painful as there
>>> were many good students who we couldn't accept because of the low slot
>>> count.
>>>
>>> I think the thing to do is to keep your hopes up, expectations low, and
>>> your proposal quality and relationship with your maintainer good.
>>
>> So, besides some direct student applications on this list, students
>> should contact projects, and projects will then contact GNU with their
>> student/project preferences (as I thought).
>
> Hmm, shouldn't applications be made via Google Melange website or something?

Sure, I was just talking about the internal process of slot allocation
inside GNU. 

> I thought it works in this way:
> 1) students contact individual GNU projects and discuss they
> proposals, make sure that mentors are available etc.
> 2) students submit polished applications officially using GSOC website
> 3) when all applications are submitted and all mentoring organizations
> (in our case GNU) get student slots, GNU discusses with project
> maintainters who gets how many slots.

I see, there was a basic misunderstanding on my side. The slots are
given after student application deadline, and depend on the number of
applying students. I thought, the number of slots has already been
decided about at the moment GNU was accepted as an organisation. 

Then it makes sense to offer quite a few project ideas for the
individual projects, since they all might receive a slot.

Thanks for the info. 

-- 
cheers,
Thorsten