The statistics in the infographic are revealing given the changes in the criteria for participation in GSoC. Whereas until 2022 GSoC only accepted students enrolled in universities now it is open to anybody over 18 new to open source. Even so 89.02% of this year's participants are enrolled in an academic program. While it used to be the case that many students engaged with GSoc year after year, this year 92.32% of contributors are participating in their first GSoC. And while GSoC is supposed to be open to newcomers to open source, 56% of participants had contributed to open source before GSoC 2025 - presumably mainly for familiarization with open source organizations and preparation for submitting a proposal.

The chances of being accepted into GSoC, given 15,240 applicants reducing to 1,280 contributors, is just 8.4%, roughly 1 in 12. In fact many more individual expressed an interest with a record 98,698 people registering from 172 countries for the 2025 program, an increase of 124.4% over the previous high.

While contributors are newbies, mentors tend not to be. Of the 2,100 mentors from 75 countries almost two-thirds have mentored GSoC contributors for four or more years.