Project submission & project ranking

Each year, the Summer Student Programme starts by publishing the Vacancy Notice for applications (beginning of November until end January). It is then followed by the launch of the project submissions taking place from 8th January to 31st January 2024 11:59am.

The Departmental Representatives of the Summer Student Programme  forward the relevant information to the potential supervisors within their respective departments. Interested supervisors have several weeks for proposing projects ON the dedicated Indico platform. It is advised to appoint two supervisors per project. Such arrangement is put in place so that the assigned summer student will have a back-up supervisor during the stay. 

Once the project submission is over, all projects are shared with the respective Department Representatives or Experiment Team leaders for a review. The review period usually takes two weeks. During this time, each project is ranked and categorized based on project priority. As there are three rounds of student pre-selections, accepted projects will be categorized based on their ranking to first, second or third round of selections and entered in the selection tool accordingly. 

Pre-selections

Two tools are used for pre-selections:

1. Smartrecruiters – to view student profiles
2. Summer student selection tool – to enter pre-selections

At each selection round, supervisors of accepted projects will be given access to available and eligible pool of candidates in Smartrecuiters. They will be able to make a pre-selection of 10 candidates in order of priority in the Summer student selection tool. Each project will have its own pre-selection.

After each selection round is over, a selection algorithm runs and makes the final assignments per project. The algorithm takes into consideration the nationality quota, project priority and the pre-selection itself. The selection guidelines as well as the selection algorithm explanation can be found here.

For information, the 2024 selection schedule is as follows:
 

• 1st Selection Round: 1 to 12 March
• Selection Algorithm 1: 14 March
• 2nd Selection Round: 20- 27 March
• Selection Algorithm 2: 28 March
• 3rd Selection Round: 3- 10 April
• Selection Algorithm 3: 11 April

Selection results are communicated after each selection round. Non-assigned projects go automatically to the following round.

Supervision guidelines

Please consult the supervision guidelines here.

Important programme dates

For important dates and events see this page.

Activities for students

Besides the work project, summer students are advised to take part in the following activities:

• Summer Student Lecture Programme (SSLP)
• CERN openlab Lectures (IT topics): July - August some afternoons (schedule can soon be found here)
• Organized CERN visits: 4 visits have been organized for each student on 2 afternoons  to the Anti Proton Decelerator & Data Centre; Synchrocyclotron & ATLAS Visitor Center. Since a lot of effort is put into the coordination of visits and assignments of guides, we require the student’s presence.
• Summer Student Workshops: taking place on afternoons. The workshop catalogue can soon be found here.