GSoC Grading Period. PLS READ

Dear potential mentors,

First of all, thank you for all your efforts in making this the most active Jenkins GSoC application period ever! We have received many proposals, responded to many questions from potential GSoC contributors, and have worked hard, and put in extra hours to support the applicants and to introduce them to our community.

We now have to select the proposals with the highest chances of success. It may seem like it is a lot of time but it is not. During these weeks we need to grade and rank applicants and organize mentor teams. It is important to start as soon as possible so that we discover gaps and, if needed, find additional mentors.

Review proposal process.

Mentor grading period: April 19 @ 18:00 UTC to April 30

Starting April 19 @ 18:00 UTC all mentors may log on to the GSoC webapp dashboard and start reviewing the proposals you consider mentoring.

You MUST read and grade proposals you are mentoring. Jenkins GSoC grading system is HERE. Do add review comments to the grading spreadsheet as it will help in the decision making process.

We highly suggest that you review other proposals as well, it will help make a better selection. If you find a project you definitely want to mentor, please click “Want to mentor”.

Grade proposals by giving a number from 5 to 1

5 (Strong Accept); 4 (Accept); 3 (Neutral); 2 (Decline); 1 (Strong Decline)

Total grades will be averaged, and will be used to rank the proposals.

As you grade, keep in mind the main question to answer: Will they be able to deliver a substantial project outcome in the allotted time?

Here are some additional guiding questions:

  1. What are their communication skills in the proposal, on the communication channels, during office hours?
  2. Did s/he understand the problem to solve?
  3. Does s/he have a clear structured view of the ‘what’ & ‘how’ that needs to be accomplished?
  4. Does s/he have a chance to succeed given her/his skills?
  5. Does s/he have the interpersonal skills to work as a team and be successful in this project?

On April 12, we will be hosting a meeting to go over the grading process and answer any questions you might have. Meeting invite to follow.

The week of May 2 - 6 org admins will conduct focused group meetings with mentors to discuss grading results for their specific project idea and rank them as a team. If there are ties this meeting will determine/break the ties.

Confidentiality. We have a lot of new mentors this year. Keep in mind that we are bound to secrecy regarding the status of applications until Google announces who is accepted in the program. The applicant reviews, and the mentor discussions about the applicants, are confidential and are only to be shared between mentors and org admins. We keep no public recording, and even Google erases the information after a while. Never tell applicants the status of their application, never tell them the internal review comments. We also do not reveal the number of applications we have received.

Communicating decisions. We never tell applicants whether we accepted their proposal or not. Google will send the announcement, not us. After the announcement, we congratulate the winners. To the applicants who are not accepted in the program, we plan on sending emails with a brief explanation of why they are not in the program. Even good applications may not make it, for example if we cannot form a mentor team, or if we do not get the number of slots we ask for.

Please note that this phase is really important. If you do not show up during the selection process, the Org Admins will not request slots for your projects. If you have any questions about this phase of the process, please reach out to the org admins in this thread or in the org admin list.

Thanks again,

Jenkins GSoC Org Admin Team

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