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If you are a student who likes writing computer programs then Google’s Summer of Code (GSoC) gives you a chance to contribute to a real world open source software project. Google plans to accept 1000 students worldwide this year. The deadline is noon (PST) on Friday April 3rd.

To apply you must first have a Google login and create a profile on the GSoC site. Then find a mentoring organization that interests you. Each mentoring organization suggests projects. You can then discuss the project with the mentoring organization to find out more about it.

The Users’ Guide tells you how to apply by writing proposals. Each proposal is submitted to the sponsoring mentoring organization. You can submit up to 20 proposals.

If you are accepted you will be paired with a mentor who will guide your programming project.

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3 Comments

  1. Thanks for the post. Reading the article, I imagined classrooms of local elementary and high school students learning, improving and cranking out code for the summer. Scanning through the user’s guide School Name section, undergrads, Master’s and Ph.D’s are used as examples of possible applicants worldwide.
    Oops, sorry under-privileged kids of Mountain View, you’ll have to wait until someone recycles their PC to the curb, grab it, run, find a monitor and hope there’s still an OS with Visual Basic on it. Oh, and I nice, quiet place to program. Good luck for those crammed into apartments.

    Ideally, I would like to see these companies (goog, msft, yhoo) do a lot more for the surrounding communities and schools.

  2. We do also have a initiative for pre-university students, the Google Highly Open Participation Contest. We’ll be reprising GHOP once again this year, and you can expect to hear more from us on that front in late Fall. If you’re interested in learning more about that offering, please see http://code.google.com/opensource/ghop/

    Alternatively, you may wish to subscribe to our discussion list, where we’ll be sharing more news about GHOP as it becomes available.

    http://groups.google.com/group/ghop-discuss

    Leslie Hawthorn
    Program Manager – Open Source
    Google Inc.

  3. Thank you for the informative post. I’ll pass that on to my students and encourage them to participate. Meanwhile, I’ll continue grabbing curbside PC’s for the less-affluent kids to level the playing field a bit.

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