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Applying to CS PhD programs for Machine Learning: what I wish I knew

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These are my takeaways from applying to PhD programs for Machine Learning, and having spent several years at Penn doing ML Research. I am fairly dogmatic in my presentation, and I describe what a high quality application looks like. These rules seem to be shared by word of mouth, but I missed that memo before my application. My hope is this prevents you from doing the same. Your application has several components people tell you about, ordered by importance: It also has another component people do not tell you about: networking. Unfortunately, these are the most important part of your application; not only do you, the student, not have direct control over their content, the contents are weighed by who is writing them. A generally positive letter, written by someone who the admissions committee knows does good research (i.e. famous in their subfield), goes much farther than a glowing recommendation letter written by someone that the admitting faculty do not know. The rational behind thi

Applying to CS PhD programs for Machine Learning: what I wish I knew Applying to CS PhD programs for Machine Learning: what I wish I knew These are my takeaways from applying to PhD programs for Machine Learning, and having spent several years at Penn doing ML Research. I am fairly dogmatic in my presentation, and I describe what a high quality application looks like. These rules seem to be shared by word of mouth, but I missed that memo before my application. My hope is this prevents you from doing the same. Your application has several components people tell you about, ordered by importance:

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