GSoC 2008 application summary

This year Google Summer of Code really grew as a program. Over 7,100 applications were submitted, almost 1,000 more than last year. Students applied from more than 1300 colleges and universities, in more than 98 countries[*1*].

This year Google offered funding for 1125 students. This is more than $5.6 million USD given freely to 177 open source projects and interested college students. Last year Google funded 900 students, so we have seen an increase in funding for an additional 225 students over last year's program. Amazing. Thank you Google!

Now more specifically to Git. We received 36 student applications from almost that many students (a couple submitted more than one project idea). That works out to be .5% of the applications. Google graciously offered Git 6 student slots, which is .5% of the total number of slots Google funded this year. One of the criteria used by Google to allocate slots to organizations is the percentage of overall applications received.

This year we had a difficult time selecting students. There were many worthy applicants and applications, and just not enough slots to go around. I wish we had more slots to give, as there were even more students that we wanted to fund.

Student stipends for Google Summer of Code run at $4500 USD. If you work for a company with deep enough pockets to be able to make such a donation to a "Git summer intern", we'd love to talk to you.

If you are a student who wasn't selected, you should be receiving a more detailed message from me in the next few days regarding your proposal. I really want to let everyone know what happened with their proposal, including the general reasoning behind why the project wasn't selected. In many cases it simply was a lack of resouces, both in terms of mentors and in terms of limited slots. Due to the relatively large number of students it will probably take me a couple of days to write everyone. Please be patient.

*1*: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2008/04/announcing-accepted-student-proposals.html