GSoC proposal

[Hin-Tak Leung]

--- On Sun, 25/3/12, Cheer Xiao <xiaqqaix at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2012/3/25 Hin-Tak Leung <htl10 at users.sourceforge.net>:
> > --- On Sun, 25/3/12, Cheer Xiao <xiaqqaix at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > <snipped>
> >> So according to you and the thread Jerome
> mentioned, uxtheme
> >> is one of
> >> the more tricky and less rewarding areas; so I will
> set it
> >> aside for
> >> the moment and work on the IME proposal instead.
> > <snipped>
> >
> > There is no reason why you cannot submit two proposals,
> if you are interested in two areas. You do not get penalized
> for doing that, other than your own time of preparing two
> proposals, which is twice the preparation work.
> >
> > In fact it is quite common for GSoC students to apply
> for more than one project under different/same
> organization.
> >
> > From the organization's point of view, it may be a good
> decision to give the project to the strongest candidate if
> there are multiple students applying to the same area; or
> not to take up any student for lack of interests (from
> mentors); in which case you might be still be taken up and
> assigned to your "2nd" choice project.
> >
> > (poor applications - showing no understandings of the
> background technology, etc - are rejected, so in that sense
> you are penalized if you cannot devote enough time to your
> proposal(s), if you divide your efforts).
> >
> 
> Thanks for the clarification.

On the "multiple proposals" idea, in fact it is explicitly in the GSoC application schedule that there is a final decision afternoon or something, at which some organization admins come together to decide which organization would take a student, if a student had submitted multiple strong proposals to multiple organizations, and multiple organizations had decided to accept the same student to work on two different proposals. So submitting multiple proposals are explicitly allowed.

Obviously, if you submit two proposals to the *same* organization, one of your applications would certainly be dropped at some intermediate stage before reaching that final stage, because they are reviewed by the same people (and there are some communications/decisions between organizations *before* that final stage, if multiple applications are made) . This is just because a student cannot be actually working on two projects over the same summer period, so all except one proposals must be turned down/withdrawn *eventually*.

I am just saying that, if you feel like you could be happy working on more than one area, and is confident you can get a good proposal in for each (for the same organization, or different ones), by all means submit more than one proposals.