Hi,
Apart from studying ourselves, It would also be interesting to do a case study of similar student participatory programs and take best practices and incorporate them. Google Summer of Code would be a classic example, though its a summer contract, but some of the aspects are worth comparing.
1. GSoC has a steep(okay relatively much higher) barrier to entry to attract the cream of students inturn the number of students would be significantly less.
2. Many students continue to contribute to the organization / open source in general beyond the contract
3. Strong staging process to cross the gates(merging the codeline happens mostly post final evaluation) ensures impact of the student does not affect the community.
4. Many communities are largely happy to participate in GSoC since they usually get contributors to the community.
5. Communication models that exist in the program, typically there would be hardly anyone from the city / country for that matter to mentor. The communication happens online inspite of timezone differences.
6. GSoC gives a huge money as motivation, but most students join the program for reasons beyond money though they swipe the cards :D
There are few students on this list who took the same program with WMF, they could share some insights too!
Regards,
Srikanth L