My notes from the mentor summit on the application are below. If I get a chance I'll edit the template with these in mind. I'm posting them here in case I forget.
Application process How should we improve our application process to attract good students, detect good students, and match good students to appropriate mentors? We should ask indirect questions to query for curiosity and passion. Negative examples: Why do you want to work on SymPy? Why do you like Math? How long have you been programming? Positive examples: Copy the favorite snippet of SymPy code you’ve seen here and tell us why you like it. What aspects of SymPy do you like the most? What editor do you use and why? Experience was that direct questions tend to have low information content (everyone says the same thing). Indirect questions will be ignored by the lazy but engage the engaged. You often want to test for curiosity and passion more than actual experience in the domain. We should match mathematically strong students with strong programmer mentors and strong programmer students with strong mathematical mentors. We often do the opposite due to shared interests but this might result in ideal contributions On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 3:02 PM, Aaron Meurer <[email protected]> wrote: > So Google has announced Google Summer of Code 2013. Here's the > timeline: http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/events/google/gsoc2012. > We need to have our org application and ideas page ready by March 9, > which is sooner than it sounds. > > The ideas page is at > https://github.com/sympy/sympy/wiki/GSoC-2013-Ideas, the org > application is at > https://github.com/sympy/sympy/wiki/GSoC-2013-Organization-Application, > and the student application template is at > https://github.com/sympy/sympy/wiki/GSoC-2013-Application-Template. > So far, they are just copies of last year's stuff. So we need to go > through the ideas page and remove any ideas that are no longer > relevant, and also add some new ones. If someone wants to attempt an > organizational cleanup of the page as well, that would be great too. > We also need to go through the organization application and student > template and update stuff. We won't know the actual questions until > February 27 when the application period starts, but in the past they > have been almost exactly the same. Any help here is greatly > appreciated. > > Now, to the main issue. Who is willing to mentor this year? If you > are willing, please add your name to the bottom of the ideas page. > It's OK if you are only able to mentor certain projects. Just note > that. Even if you are on the fence, add your name. The more potential > mentors we have, the better it looks to Google when they are reading > our application. When it comes down to it, you won't have to mentor > anybody unless you want to. > > If you've participated as a student before, I encourage you to > consider mentoring. You may also apply as a student again if you > want. > > To the people who helped review applications last year, are there any > changes you would like to see to the application template this year? I > know that there was a session at last year's mentor summit about this, > which Matthew, GIlbert, and Stefan attended. It would be great if you > guys could review the template with that session in mind. > > To anyone who is interested in applying to Google Summer of Code as a > student, I recommend you read through > https://github.com/sympy/sympy/wiki/GSoC-2013-Application-Template. > Then, introduce yourself on this list (if you haven't already), and > get started on fulfilling your patch requirement. You should also > start discussing what idea(s) you are are interested in. We look > forward to meeting you. > > Aaron Meurer > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "sympy" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sympy?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sympy?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
