The best thing to help your application is to contact the organization and mentors you want to work with early. You can introduce yourself in an issue with, or perhaps send a small PR to the project.
The opensource guide has a good introduction how to start contributing to open source projects.
The answer is generally: Yes. Note that our organization values creativity, intelligence and enthusiasm above specific knowledge of the libraries or algorithms we use. We think that a motivated students who are willing to learn are more valuable than anything else
The GSoC Guide gives a good overview of this part for GSoC.
We usually favor students that show regular communication with possible mentors until Google announces the accepted projects.
These tips are here to help with your application. They are not required
- Have you communicated with the organization's mentors?
- Have you communicated with the community?
- Did you reference projects you coded WITH links to repos or provided code?
- Did you provide methods to contact you?
- Did you include a draft project plan (before, during, after GSoC)?
- Did you state which project you are applying for and why you think you will end up completing the project?
- Do you have time for GSoC? This is a paid job! State that you have time in your motivation letter, and list other commitments!
- Did you create a pull request on the existing code?
- Did you continue communication until accepted students are announced?