I looked up previous posts about MIT EECS PhD applications. It seems in previous years MIT asked applicants to choose a specific area, i.e. Area II: AI etc.
This year seems to be different: MIT asks applicants to choose 3 areas. I personally chose Theory and ML.
Does anyone know about the selectivity and competition among these areas? I'm applying to do a theory-flavored ML so I'm not sure which applicants I'm competing with. I heard Machine Learning is the most competitive area at this moment: it'd be very tough to get into MIT, Berkeley or Stanford without a first-author NIPS or ICML paper. Is that true?
