Google Summer of Code 2012

Google will pre-publish the evaluation questions for both students and mentors. Mentors will fill out mid-term and final evaluations for their students via the Google Summer of Code 2012 site. These evaluations will be visible in the system to the mentor and the mentoring organization's administrator(s). Students will fill out a mid-term and final evaluation of their mentors online as well, and their evaluations will only be visible in the system to the mentoring organization's administrator(s). Program administrators from Google will have access to all evaluation data.

Any student who does not submit an evaluation by the evaluation deadline will fail that evaluation, regardless of the grade the mentor gives the student. If a student submits his or her evaluation on time but the mentor does not, then the student is in an “undecided” state until the program administrators can speak to the mentor and determine the student’s grade.

Students who fail the mid-term are immediately removed from the program: it’s not possible to fail the mid-term, stay in the program, and then have a final evaluation.

In almost all cases, students will never see their mentor's evaluation of their progress, nor will a mentor see a student's evaluation of her/his mentorship. However, in the case where the mentoring organization's administrator and a student's mentor are one and the same, the student's evaluation will be shared with the mentor. If you are a student in a situation where your mentor is also your organization’s administrator and you would like to discuss an issue with the program, please contact the Google Summer of Code program administrators. Organization administrators are expected to review mid-term and final evaluations and to provide course corrections where necessary. In some cases, Google's program administrators may need to share the results of evaluations with the student and mentor, such as to arbitrate when payment should not be made. Should this need arise, all parties will be notified in advance.

In the unlikely event that a mentor and organization administrator do not agree on a student’s grade for any evaluation, the decision of the organization administrator is the final one.

In the also unlikely event that a student does not agree with a mentoring organization’s evaluation decision at either the midterm or the final, the student may choose to submit his/her entire project plan, timeline and code sample to Google’s program administrators. Google will choose an independent engineer to review the code and arbitrate the decision. The decision of Google’s independent engineer is final.

Finally, any mentor who misses a deadline for an evaluation of his/her student without notifying the program administrators beforehand will not be allowed to attend the Google Summer of Code mentor summit. Timely evaluations of Google Summer of Code students are crucial to us.

Google does not have specific eligibility requirements for mentors, as we know our mentoring organizations will be best able to determine the selection criteria for their mentors.

We've given this question a lot of thought, and we've decided it is best not to allow participants to act as a mentor to another Google Summer of Code student while they are working on their own Google Summer of Code student project. We want to make sure that each project and student receives sufficient attention, and we're concerned that this split in focus could create a bad experience for those involved. Please choose whether participation as a mentor or a student is more appealing to you and plan to apply accordingly.

While the answer to this question will vary widely depending on the number of students a mentor works with, the difficulty of the proposals, and the skill level of the students, most mentors have let us know that they underestimated the amount of time they would need to invest in Google Summer of Code. Five hours per student per week is a reasonable estimate.