Kesem Presents: Computer Science

Welcome to the GitHub repository full of fun, fancy scripts meant to run on Camp Kesem applications and letters of reference from Wufoo.

History

Before the electronic application, Camp Kesem used PDF applications sent to the CoCo email account. Well, never more! Kesem and Computer Science have finally joined hands.

Wufoo allows users to export entries (submissions of a form) into a CSV or Excel format. We use CSV, which is easier to manipulate programatically.

CSV stands for comma-separated values, which is basically an Excel document represented in text format (see Wikipedia for an example).

But since applications and references are in CSV format, they're almost impossible to read! So these scripts are here to help with that (among other things).

Computer Setup

To get these scripts running, run the following commands in your terminal.

1. Navigate to your "Documents" directory: cd ~/Documents
2. Clone this github repository: git clone git@github.com:jlkravitz/kesem-selection.git
3. Navigate to the new directory: cd kesem-selection
4. Make the AppReading directory: mkdir AppReading
5. Install fpdf, a python library for building pdfs: pip install fpdf
6. Separately, install Table Tool for Mac. This will make it easier to view and edit CSV files, which you'll have to do later.
7. Separately (again), export the applications and references from Wufoo into CSV format.

Move them to the AppReading directory, created above. Call them apps.csv and references.csv.

The AppReading directory will be your home for all things related to applications. Eventually, you'll want to uplaod this entire directory to Google Drive.

NOTE: Only export once you know you have all applications and references. These scripts don't play nicely with "new" apps and references. This means that you can't start reading apps until all apps are in, so don't give long deadline extensions!

Nice! Your computer is ready to rumble...

(For computer nerds: This code is python2-compatible and almost python3 compatible. I originally wrote this for python3 since it's easier to deal with unicode, but decided to change to python2 to avoid forcing non-computer-nerds to install python3, which isn't installed on computers by default.)

Before You Start

When you make any updates to the application or reference, you'll need to make some changes to the codebase to ensure applications and references are properly read in (in other words, you'll probably need to do this :-)). In particular, in wufoo_entry_loader.py, you'll find two functions load_apps and load_references, which define keys and values for relevant fields in the application and reference, respectively. You can edit the field_map in each function.

Note that the columns are 0-indexed, so row[n - 1] accesses the nth column of row, which is an application or reference submitted to Wufoo. For example, you would access the first column with row[0]. To add fields or edit existing ones, you'll need to know which column the field occupies in the exported Wufoo CSV file.

Instructions

Once you've set up the codebase to work with this year's application and reference, you're ready to go.

Run the following commands from your terminal in the kesem-selection directory.

1. python cross_reference.py
   1. This script cross references each applicant with each letter of reference and vice versa. It will list any problems (e.g., applicants that don't seem to have a letter of reference).
   2. You will have to fix these problems before running any other scripts (the one exception: applicants with letters that are truly missing).
   3. To have the scripts "ignore" an application or reference, change the "Completion Status" column to a 0. Do this carefully, as you are effectively removing an application or reference from our application pool.
   4. Each time you make a change to apps.csv or references.csv, run python cross_reference.py again. Make sure you see the expected result.
   5. LISTEN UP!: You should NOT continue past this step until all issues listed by cross_reference.py are manually resolved (i.e., by removing extra letters of reference and fixing names such that each application corresponds with exactly one letter of reference). Keep running python cross_reference.py until nothing (except for references that truly don't have a matching applicant) is listed!
   6. LISTEN UP!: Once you have completed this step, immediately upload apps.csv and references.csv (or simply the entire AppReading directory) to Google Drive. You do not want to lose these files!
2. Optional: python app_stats.py
   1. This will list the applicant breakdown in each year and the gender breakdown within each year.
   2. You can run this whenever you want – it only analyzes the data and changes nothing!
3. python assign_applicant_ids.py
   1. This script assigns IDs to each application. This is for the purpose of anonymizing applications and for use in the final deliberation room (if your Rainbow decides to anonymize deliberations, too).
   2. OUTPUT: CSV file in the AppReading/ directory with a mapping from applicant names to IDs.

From here, choose one of the options below (you'll probably do both eventually) ...

Scored Application Reading

Follow these instructions for setting up the process of having readers score each application.

4. python make_conflicts_of_interest_spreadsheet.csv
   1. This script creates a spreadsheet which allows readers to mark applicants they know. Any marked applicants won't be assigned to that reader.
   2. You'll have to know the names of every reader to run this script.
   3. Once you've run this, upload conflicts_of_interest.csv (you'll find this in the AppReading/ directory) to Google Drive and open it in Google Sheets. Have readers mark people they know with an "x" (any non-empty cell will count).
   4. Once completed by each reader, download the file as a CSV and put it back into the AppReading/ directory.
   5. OUTPUT: CSV file in the AppReading/ directory, meant for readers to mark as conflicts of interest.
5. python make_reader_folders.py
   1. For each reader, this script assigns applicants (keeping in mind the conflicts spreadsheet above), creates a reader-specific score sheet, and creates a reader-specific application packet with applications and letters of reference for each applicant.
   2. Make sure to quickly inspect AppReading/app_read_assignments.csv before hitting enter. If it looks relatively sane (e.g., everyone is assigned to one reader, no applicants are assigned, etc), continue on!
   3. Once the script finishes running (be patient! this can take a few minutes), upload the AppReading/ folder to Google Drive. Tell readers to double click on their CSV score sheets and click "Open in Google Sheets".
   4. Wahoo! Readers can now read apps.
6. At this point, you should rename applicant_ids.csv to indicate the secrecy of the file -- for example, to something like applicant_ids (SENSITIVE: DO NOT OPEN).csv. Anonymity goes out the window if readers or Rainbow members look at this file. Note also how important this file is. If we lose it, it will be a pain to figure out which applicant IDs coorespond with which applicants.

Pre-Interview Application Reading

Follow these instructions for making PDFs of apps and references for ULs/Rainbow members to read before interviews to learn about the applicant their interviewing.

4. python make_individual_pdfs.py or python make_individual_pdfs.py --unanonymized
   1. This script makes PDFs for both applications (which go in the directory AppReading/apps/) and letters of reference (which go in the directory AppReading/references/).
   2. For anonymized apps, run the first command. For apps with names, run the second. You'll probably want names on the apps for those interviewing a particular applicant.
   3. Upload the AppReading/ directory (which now contains individual apps and references) to Google Drive.