Geek Feminism: Showing your awesomeness for Google Summer of Code

Continuing Mary's brilliant idea of having a GF classifieds article for GSoC projects, I decided to provide a second thread with tips and questions in hopes to encourage more GSoC applicants from the GF community:

Showing your awesomeness for Google Summer of Code

The short tips:

1. Get involved with the community early.
   
2. Spend some time doing research on your proposed project.
   
3. Ask smart questions.
   
4. Contribute to the project in advance.
   
5. Don’t be afraid to apply!

See the article for more details, including a short story about how lots of women think they aren't awesome enough to do GSoC... but they really are!

Those of you involved in GSoC as mentors, we'd love some more tips if you can think of any! I'm new to this, and while I polled a couple of mentors and a former student for the ideas that made up my list, I'm sure there are more ideas worth mentioning.