GSOC 2026

[seeder12]

I have a genuine question for GSoC 2026.
Does only doing PRs in large number only criteria for selection in Boa-Dev ?
Because I can't compete with people making 2 PRs and 2 Issues per day using those AIs.
It seems more like a PR making competition than an opportunity to learn about open source

Can the maintainers please answer my query ?
@jedel1043 @hansl

[jedel1043]

Not at all! The number of PRs you open won't affect the evaluation we do to your proposal. We will only evaluate the proposal itself, and opening PRs is just an opportunity to get used to the codebase.

[zhuzhu81998]

do you expect/recommend/allow potential applicants to draft an idea in advance and get feedback on it before the actual proposal? if yes where might one post it? (publicly on github/matrix might be a slight issue since applicants are kinda competitors for the spots XD)

[jedel1043]

I would recommend double checking GSOC's guidelines first, but my naive response would be yes, if GSOC allows it then we're open to giving feedback to applicants on their drafts

[zhuzhu81998]

GSoC says this (you can apparently change the proposal any time until the deadline):

Submit your proposal early during the application period so that the organization mentors can review it and ask you questions or request more detail on aspects of your proposal before the final deadline.

What would be interesting to know is if you would give feedback before the official application period starts (which is in 11 days.) and which channels should one use? Some orgs e.g. list the emails of the potential mentors of each topic/idea.

[jedel1043]

Yeah, we're open to giving feedback. For communication channels, just use private messages on Matrix.

[SKM2227229725]

Thank you for clarifying that PR count is not the main evaluation criteria.

For students who are new to the codebase, would you recommend focusing on small issues or documentation improvements first to better understand the project before preparing a GSoC proposal?

[jedel1043]

Yep definitely. If you at least know the codebase, you will be able to create a better proposal