My GSoC Proposal Got Rejected

I missed my chance at Google Summer of Code during my undergraduate years, and it always stuck with me. When my MSc made me eligible again, I wasn't going to let it slip by a second time. I found an interesting project, put together what I thought was a solid proposal, and gave it my best shot. It didn't work out, but I'm still glad I tried.

How It Started

Last year, I attended a session by Jayasanka, a member of the TechTrack community, where he shared how getting selected for GSoC had changed his life (Check my article about it here). It was genuinely inspiring, and I remember feeling a quiet disappointment knowing I had missed that window during my undergraduate years. When I started my MSc and realized I was suddenly eligible again, I knew I had to make the most of it this time.

Finding the Right Organization

As soon as GSoC announced the participating organizations list on February 19th, I started going through each one, looking for something in the Data and AI space but with less competition than the bigger names. After shortlisting a few, I decided to go with the Alaska organization, maintained by the University of Alaska.

Interestingly, one of the main mentors there is Sri Lankan, a professor at the university from what I could find. He's clearly a dedicated mentor and replies to messages almost instantly, but he came across as quite cold in his tone.

The Project: TENeT

The project itself was genuinely exciting, and very relevant to the field I've been focusing on lately. It's called TENeT, short for Telehealth Effectiveness and Necessity Tracker for Alaska.

What made it especially appealing was that it was a brand new project, built entirely from scratch. No hours spent digging through an unfamiliar codebase. Instead, we had to design the system from the ground up, with complete freedom, right down to choosing the programming language.

Working on the Proposal

I started working on my proposal and asked a few questions in the discussion area. I noticed that some other candidates had already made significant progress, with their own branches where they had begun developing the project months earlier. Nothing had been merged to the main branch yet since contributions weren't officially open, but the gap in preparation was visible.

The mentor had made it clear that he wasn't expecting candidates to do actual coding before the project officially started, since it was a greenfield project. So I put all my focus into the proposal rather than writing code.

After two or three weeks, I had a draft ready. Even with a few strong candidates in the mix, I felt I was well-qualified and had put together something solid. I was cautiously confident, though I knew deep down the odds weren't great. I used Claude and Gemini to refine my ideas, explore different approaches, and review the proposal before sharing it with the mentor. I then shared a draft of the proposal with the mentor to check if I was on the right track. He replied the same day and said it looked fine to him, so I submitted it and waited.

The Result

On April 30th, right after the high of passing my SnowPro Associate certification, I waited a couple of hours until GSoC released the results. At 11:30 PM, they dropped, and all the joy from passing the certification faded instantly.

My proposal was rejected. The project went to the candidate who had been working on it for months before GSoC even began. Honestly, he probably deserved it. He put in more work than I did, and that's fair.

Wrapping Up

It was an interesting couple of months, and I'm proud that I at least tried. For some people, GSoC might not be a particularly big deal. But I had wanted to be part of something like this ever since I missed the chance during my bachelor's. Better late than never, I suppose. Maybe there's a next time.