2022-06-08

How to Apply to Google Summer of Code – GSoC Application Guide

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Whether you are a college student or a working professional, GSoC now is open to both.

How to Apply to GSoC

You can think of a GSoC proposal as a university SOP. Submitting the SOP takes a few seconds. You start preparing for your SOP a year or so in advance by doing internships, participating in various programs, and working on personal projects. This will help your SOP be strong and stand out.

You'll need to put in quite a bit of effort and time to the GSoC proposal as well. As GSoC is for open source beginners, you could have been be contributing to open source for a year or less and are eligible to apply for the program.

I started contributing to open source in Feb 2022. I came across the Github repository that has a list of beginner-friendly projects along with the label names you should look at. That's how I found my first organisation to contribute to open source: freeCodeCamp.

After making minor document changes, I wrote test cases for freeCodeCamp's CodeRadio Client, and this was my first actual code contribution.

The GSoC organizations were announced in March. I was looking for Python and JavaScript projects. I used the search bar on the organization's listing page to list the organizations in my preferred technology. I read their GSoC page (every org has its own GSoC page, so make sure you read it thoroughly) and went through their Github repositories. I cloned their repositories, used their product, read the issues list, and so on.

That's how came across Open Food Facts, a food database that holds details about each food product. The information comes from the manufacturer's nutrition details. The project is turning 10 this year and has 2.3M+ food products, 2.7M+ monthly visitors, and has reached 182 countries (Source: Open Food Facts blog).

How did I select my first GSoC organization?

Selecting the right organization is as important as writing a good proposal. If your goals do not align with the organization there is a high chance your proposal won't be accepted.

Here are the reasons why I selected Open Food Facts as my first GSoC organization:

I was able to set up and run Open Food Facts Hunger games repository easily. Previously I had tried to set up Chrome, Brave, and Django but wasn't successful. I was aware of how difficult things can get at the setup stage itself.

It was easy to understand what they did. I quickly found a beginner-friendly issue and commented on it for further guidance. (A beginner-friendly issue is already picked by the organization and reserved for beginners. It is usually under the label: first-timers only, beginner-friendly)

Mentors here were super supportive. I am grateful for their guidance and trust. It was because of their timely guidance and mentorship that I completed my proposal in time.

I understood their technology. This does not mean I knew everything. The main part of the project that reads nutrition data from the food label is in Python AI/ML. The main website is in Perl. I am not a Perl or ML student. I mostly go for Python and JavaScript projects. They have labels that say no ML knowledge required and I pick those to work on.

Coming to non-technical reasons, I had started late in March and the deadline to submit the proposal was the third week of April. I did not have enough time to explore many organizations. I focussed on quality instead of quantity. You can submit at most 3 proposals to GSoC. I worked hard on only one proposal and gave all my time and energy to it.

Open Food Facts has scope for both ~175 hour and ~350 hour projects.

How I wrote my first proposal

The proposal is the heart of your GSoC application. The strength of your proposal is directly proportional to the chances that you'll get selected.