Hi @owais.hussain, to try answer your questions:
This is a likely scenario. Students can submit up to three proposals for different projects across organizations, and similarly, we should expect to have several applications from multiple students for the same project. Once the student application process opens and applications start to be submitted, project mentors will be asked to review these applications. Mentors are encouraged to review applications for the projects they are personally involved in, as well as those for other OpenMRS projects. We will set up a meeting for project mentors during this time to discuss application evaluation criteria and review student proposals as a group. I’d encourage mentors to read through the chapter on Selecting a Student from the GSoC Mentor Guide. This is a great resource exploring student motivations and general student selection criteria.
At this stage, interested students should be focused on getting involved with OpenMRS and the community, discussing and researching the projects they’re interested in, and reviewing the application requirements and questions towards preparing their project applications. This is described more in the Finding The Right Project chapter from the GSoC Student Guide:
In most cases, your potential mentor(s) will have lots of ideas and preconceptions about each project that were not included in its original description on the Project Ideas page. Discuss and research the project idea in as much detail as possible. You may even consider preparing mock-ups (illustrations, powerpoint, or websites) to help clarify your understanding and vision of the project. You will want to discuss the scope of the project idea, including which parts are critical versus optional for the summer timeline. This process will directly feed into your application and ideally distinguish it from all the others. Just think about it: if you’ve helped clarify the project idea and contributed to an actual plan of action, it makes it an easy process for mentors to evaluate your proposal and give it a high ranking!
In other words, students are encouraged to begin discussing projects, contributing code to OpenMRS, achieving /dev/1 status, and working on introductory tasks related to the projects they’re interested in. As they begin to develop their project applications, they may want to start spec’ing out the actual project tasks, mocking up ideas and the high-level architecture. However, they cannot officially start working on the project before the start date, since applications have not been submitted yet, and students have not been selected yet. Students should be aware of these expectations if they have familiarised themselves with the guidelines for interested students and GSoC Student Guide.
Sidenote: If you’re looking for ideas for relevant introductory tasks for students to work on, please raise this on Talk to discuss further.