Eduard, Thanks for the message and sentiments. I believe I understand your position, though one of the differences between GSoC applications and PhD admission is the scrutiny process. There are more detailed surveys of your academic history, transcripts, sometimes interviews, essays, and underlying acceptance criteria (standard tests, GPA requirements, etc). There's a lot of time for them to get to know you when applying to a PhD program.
With GSoC, we don't have nearly as much time so to get to know the applicant and there's barely any time to get a gauge of their actual abilities, communication skills, personality, etc. It's not just about the work. It's about how you as a person will integrate with a community. Some students have phenomenal resumes, but are actually very ineffective in an open source development environment due to social issues. Others can communicate very well, but cannot code. That uncertainty means that a lot more effort has to be put forth to communicate early, communicate often, integrate with the community, and to show ability. That's why it's good for students to contribute to the community long before GSoC even begins. Another fundamental difference is that a PhD program is usually about the student accomplishing a project. That is not the focus of GSoC. The projects are a means to an end, not the end-goal itself. Some projects are great, but it's just not the goal of participating for most orgs. The intent is to attract new developers that will contribute to the project long after summer is over. Thinking of it as "a job" generally makes for a very weak candidate as that has consistently shown to be individuals with little long-term prospect or interest in that open source community. Cheers! Sean On Wednesday, April 15, 2009, at 05:04PM, "Bazavan Eduard" <[email protected]> wrote: >Hello, > > I've seen your reply on my project submission on GSoC. My name is >Eduard-Gabriel Bazavan. But I kind of don't agree with this GSoC attitude of >describing projects in detail before acceptance. > I think of the case of PhD admission where you don't have to be very >explicit when you apply. You just say for example you want a PhD in Computer >Science and then they accept you regarding your grades and your general >results. > Every college that respects itself will give the student a certain >amount of homework/tests etc... in the middle of a semester and thus wasting >3-4 days trying to be extensively explicit about what you're going to do on a >supposed three months project isn't very productive. > What I mean is that most of us are extremely busy this period to write >project use cases for some 5-10 applications. > Clearly if we are accepted we will invest the required amount of work. >I consider that a CV and some general description is sufficient to see if >someone is suited for a certain job or not. > > Best >wishes, > > >E. Bazavan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stay on top of everything new and different, both inside and around Java (TM) technology - register by April 22, and save $200 on the JavaOne (SM) conference, June 2-5, 2009, San Francisco. 300 plus technical and hands-on sessions. Register today. Use priority code J9JMT32. http://p.sf.net/sfu/p _______________________________________________ BRL-CAD Developer mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/brlcad-devel
