[GSoC 2020] Extraordinary circumstances and early birds

From: madhur4127 (madhur4127_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-03-28 05:31:35

Hi Boost Community,

I am Madhur, an active contributor to Boost.Multiprecision.

I am from India and am observing that summer internships (for students in
the penultimate year) are being canceled because of COVID-19. This is a huge
loss to brilliant and enthusiastic students as they will not be able to gain
experience.

This could be an opportunity for Boost to mentor these students who don't
have prior experience with open source or with a rich C++ background. If a
student is ready to devote himself/herself then I guess there's enough time
to learn (till Jun 1) about C++/Project to get things rolling.

> FYI, you are late.

Mateusz posted in other thread about the student being late (as of today)
but the GSoC application deadline is due March 31, which I would
wholeheartedly agree in case of normal circumstances.

The point I'm trying to make here is that in these extraordinary
circumstances:
- should Boost neglect the "early bird" and treat all applicants equally? 
- should Boost compensate for the lack of work samples with the history of
the student (like academic records, academic projects, research papers)?
- should Boost consider other factors too while selecting the student this
year like the education level (seniority level: 4th/5th year of study or
PhD)? For example, if a student had taken a course in numerical
algorithms/computational algorithms then that applicant's insights could be
beneficial to Boost.Multiprecision than other applicants.

If a student performs well in the competency test then it indicates that the
student would do the job and I think the selection criteria should be
tweaked so as to consider that students who lost internships and otherwise
who could be a great value to the library (even for a short time - GSoC)
don't get neglected.

Well, these are my views as a student. Eagerly waiting for your thoughts!

Thank you for having time to read this unusually long message :)

--
Sent from: http://boost.2283326.n4.nabble.com/Boost-Dev-f2600599.html