diff --git a/General-Application-Information.md b/General-Application-Information.md index ed93fdee02..aabfb5c9e1 100644 --- a/General-Application-Information.md +++ b/General-Application-Information.md @@ -40,7 +40,8 @@ the result of your thinking as a review. A complete application should include a presentation of yourself (include any argument that may convince mentors that you are able to -complete the project) and detailed explanations about your project. +complete the project) and detailed explanations about your +project. See also the "Note about giving back and mentoring" below. Project ideas are just ... ideas! The list we provide is not exhaustive, and more importantly each idea only includes a summary of @@ -122,6 +123,39 @@ The Git organization usually has very limited mentoring capacity. These days we usually accept between 0 and 3 students per season (Winter or Summer). +## Note about giving back and mentoring + +We appreciate very much students and interns who stay around after the +mentoring period is over. It is very nice to see them on the mailing +list, even if they don't contribute much. It's of course better when +they continue to contribute though, even by just reviewing a patch +from time to time. + +Some people have been around for more than 10 years, others have +become regular contributors and that's great! + +One very nice way to contribute and to give back is to mentor or +co-mentor other students or interns coming after you. It helps create +more opportunities for more students and interns like you, as +mentoring capacity is the main factor preventing us from accepting +more students and interns. If each student or intern accepted to +co-mentor twice (once in Summer and once in Winter) just after they +have been mentored, our mentoring capacity could increase +significantly each year. + +Unfortunately very few former students or interns have been willing to +just co-mentor along with an experienced mentor, even though it +doesn't require much work, technical ability or time. + +Other free or open source projects have done better than us on +this. At the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit for example, more +than 30% of the mentors that are former students. + +Therefore if you can show us in your application that you like +mentoring, giving back and sticking to the projects you have worked +on, you are likely to significantly increase your chances to be +selected. + ## Note about refactoring projects versus projects that implement new features Over the years we have been favoring refactoring projects over