Student selection process

Introduction

This page aims to summarise the student selection process we developed at the 8.5.13 meeting. This will be subject to discussion for a limited period, after which we will make an official statement. Our goal is to come to an agreement by Sunday 12th May 12pm.

In order to avoid an overwhelming amount of applications that we would not be able to process, we want to split the process into several steps in order to filter them. There will also be a number of rules that the application should follow.

Once we're done discussing this, we will explain the process on a page on our website.

The Steps

1. Finding a coach (and a pair)

The first step for the student is to get in touch with her local Rails Girls community, so that she can find a coach and preferably another student to pair-program with.

Our role here will be to direct her to her community in case they aren't in contact anymore (which is likely to happen in the less active local communities).

2. Coach evaluation

The role of the coach will be to evaluate the skill-level of the student. We feel we can trust and rely on the coaches to do these evaluations. The coach will able to use the 'Student Application Page' (see last chapter) which will help her/him measure the level of expertise of the student and see if it fits the program.

3. Student application

Once the coach and the student have made sure the application fits the rules, the student will complete and submit the application form (with or without a preferred project is still open to discussion if I recall well. LP)

4. First triage

Before proceeding to an interview stage, or a selection raffle, or something else, we will read the application and sort or prioritize them according to a list of criteria:

• no application without a coach
• pair before solo
• an experience level required (we will need concrete examples)
• more experienced before less experienced
• 3 months before 2 months
• women before men
• (more ?)

5. Interviews?

If we reach a reasonable amount of application after the 4th step, we can interview the students, with or without their coach, to double-check that their application follows the rules and that the level of the student is sufficient.

6. The Final Selection

At this step, we ensure that all the applications meet all the requirements. If we say that we sorted them, and marked them according to how many of the criteria they met (level of experience, if pair or not etc.), we should take the best profiles first. And why not do a raffle in case we can't choose. Or you know, several Hunger-Games_Style cage fights.

Our aim is to have 20 participants, but the number of seats will be given by the amount of $$$ we get from the sponsors.

The Rules

If you apply, please make sure to follow these rules:

2. You need a coach (we can help there).
3. You need to be able to work full-time for at least two months, even better three.
4. Your coach needs to be available full-time, he/she can share the coaching role with somebody else. They should ideally provide a desk for you to work next to them.
5. You should have attended at least one Rails Girls workshop (or an equivalent like RailsBridge).
6. You need a certain amount of programming experience in Ruby, so you should at least have worked independently or in a study group on a Ruby project. Please provide concrete examples of what you did.
7. You should not already be a professional Ruby developer.
8. Don't lie on your application ;).
9. Oh, and you should not kill (unless you get very frustrated with working on a Windows machine in which case you are allowed to install Ubuntu).