I've heard from four people that improving 2to3 would be a great project (plus many more suggesting "port X to Python 3" as project ideas).

Note the SoC timeline; http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/program/google/gsoc2009/timeline

So maybe it won't work for 3.1, but perhaps 3.1.1? 3.2?

We should have many ideas up for students to consider.  The more student who apply and the more mentors we have ready determines how many students we get total.

As part of this I should add, we need at least one mentor per student, preferably two.  These should be people familiar with and actively working in the area the student would be.  We're putting mentor contact info on the wiki so potential students can hash out the details with them before applying.