How to apply for Google Summer Of Code
Introduction to Google Summer Of Code
What is Google Summer of Code? It is a platform established by Google for students all around the world, introducing them to the world of open source focusing more on learning and yes, it is paid as well. You will be working for foreign companies from home for 10 weeks, In the world of programming the work that is considered truly deeming and helpful is what we do by contributing to open source projects.
Since the inception of this program in 2005, it just keeps getting better and bigger, each year more organizations are open for applications, allowing more and more students worldwide to gain something better from this opportunity. Before you apply, make sure you are enrolled in a accredited degree providing educational institute within your country to be able to apply for this.
Registration
The registration part is very easy it just requires all your personal and official details. Before you start registering, keep your student identity card of your institute and your country’s identity card as well. Registration has several fields to fill, They are important as they can get you disqualified from the program. Just use the Id cards to properly fill the form. Make sure you provide accurate details as the follow up processes requires you to submit a proof of your enrollment in any accredited degree providing institute
providing false or fraudulent info will get you removed from the opportunity.
After registration you are demanded two things, they will be discussed in next several paragraphs.
Proof of Enrollment
I’ll try to breakdown the the instructions provided by google.
Without the proof of enrollment, you will not be eligible or acceptable for Google Summer of Code 2020.
Google has asked for any one of the following documents, you can submit a scanned copy of your institute’s identification card that clearly shows you are going to be enrolled in the institute before or on September 30,2021. In case your Id card does not have any date mentioned on it, it must somehow indicate that you are enrolled in school for year 2021.
Another way is course transcript i.e. Unofficial Transcript of your institution or course list is also eligible for proof just make sure that it is not in “.txt” format.
You can also provide a letter from student’s affair department from your institution stating that you are enrolled as a student for a time period that includes May 21, 2021 in it. Keynotes here is, it must be on institution’s letter head, the letter must have the institute’s logo/seal/stamp, must contain a signature by the administrative department’s representative to make it official.
In case if you are failed to provide any of the above document, there can be many different documents that satisfies the demands of proof for enrollment, the main features it must include is your name, institutes name and a recent date.
Semester class schedule or syllabus for upcoming semester, A payment receipt that shows you paid for an upcoming session or current session. A letter that shows your scholarship or financial aid, that covers the given date May 21,2021.
There is no demand for checking your Private information such as phone numbers, grades achieved or your tuition fee.
The document is required only to check your whether you are a student to be eligible for the program or not. That must include your name, your institutes name and its address.
If you want to submit more than one document, use a pdf maker to convert them into a PDF format as a single file. Remember, acceptable formats are PDF, JPG, PNG, any format such as TXT, DOCX or any other than this will not be acceptable.
Now the Main Guide
After successfully registering and providing enrollment proofs, you are required to submit a proposal to any selected organization you may like, or for sake of learning. First, you must understand how these organizations work.
All these organizations have a list that indicates the available mentors and their ideas for their upcoming/previous projects, these projects are open sourced for internees to contribute to it. This will not only make you proud but also a pro-developer :D, Jokes but yes you will be hailed as a Hero, if you are accepted.
After making a choice about the organization to apply for, you must open the list of their ideas, read all of them carefully, scroll in for the details until and unless you have selected one idea that you think you can easily work on and contribute to. I must mention that the ideas listed there assumes that an internee or a student understands the ethics of programming, you do not have to panic, or sky-rocket any of the idea listed.
Now let’s take an example, you open the organizations list… to mention one of the organizations I found first, AboutCode.org. I am not asking you to straight away apply to this, this is just an example keep this in mind. firstly, open the list of Project Ideas, scroll down you may find different projects but lets select ScanCode projects.
Now this contains several ideas such as Improving Copyright detection accuracy and speed in ScanCode. After reading the description of the idea and you think you can do it, go for it. “Although you can submit your own idea to this organization”. let’s carry on to the next step, go back to the AboutCode.org page on Google Summer Of Code platform where you got Ideas list button and the link to ideas list, you scroll down and finds the possible method of submitting the proposal, they have submitted a template or list of key features your proposal must include.
The proposal requirements are as followed we expect your application to be in the range of 1000 words. Anything less than that will probably not contain enough information for us to determine whether you are the right person for the job. Your proposal should contain at least the following information, plus anything you think is relevant:
· Your name
· Title of your proposal
· Abstract of your proposal
· Detailed description of your idea including explanation on why it is innovative and what it will contribute to the project
· hint: explain your data structures and you planned main processing flows in details.
· Description of previous work, existing solutions (links to prototypes, bibliography are more than welcome)
· Mention the details of your academic studies, any previous work, internships
· Relevant skills that will help you to achieve the goal (programming languages, frameworks)?
· Any previous open-source projects (or even previous GSoC) you have contributed to and links.
· Do you plan to have any other commitments during GSoC that may affect your work? Any vacations/holidays? Will you be available full time to work on your project? (Hint: do not bother applying if this is not a serious full-time commitment during the GSoC time frame)
This is entirely copied from there website “https://github.com/nexB/aboutcode/wiki/GSOC-2020#about-your-project-application”, I didn’t write any of these features.
This is all about How to write a proposal to the given organization.
Submitting your proposal
In submission part google provides you a step by step guide for how you can create a soft copy i.e. draft and get a feedback on initial/first draft. You can also select alternative sharing link for submitting your first draft, but you must also provide a method for getting a review from the organization.
It was all about step one, now comes to step two where you have to name your proposal, the name can be the idea you are going to work on or simply a proposal to the given organization and writing an abstract about the project you are going to contribute on. Once you are done with it, in step 3 you are asked to submit the first draft for getting a review and making the changes afterwards and in the final step you will have to make a PDF copy of your draft and submit it which they will consider after the deadline for submission in Google Summer of Code.
In the end I must mention that this entire guide is created upon my understanding of GSoC and reviewed by some experienced developers. This is not any sort of official guide or something, just to help you all for submitting and making the most out of Google Summer of Code. At the end I am also attaching a GSoC Internee’s Proposal for guidance. You can click this to open a past proposal.
