CS PhD at Stanford

[wirate]

I might be asking what has already been asked but I need very specific advice about building my profile so that I have better chances at getting into CS PhD at Stanford.

 

I will be graduating in Spring 2014 (undergrad degree in CS) so I have a little time to work on my profile. My CGPA is 3.74 and I stand 5th in a class of 70. However, the CGPA doesn't do justice to my very high scores in core CS courses. As always.

 

I am very enthusiastic about machine learning. I am currently taking the CS229 Machine Learning course by Andrew NG online. I am a research assistant at the robotics lab at my college for a project that applies machine learning to laparoscopic surgery . However, my work there is more like implementing whatever my supervisor tells me to. I might co-author a paper published at some rank B machine learning conference in 4 - 5 months.

 

What I really want to ask is what I should do for my final year project to really make it count. This will be an 8-month project with a team of up to 4 students. I am really hoping I get something good done in this time. Maybe a couple of rank A conference papers or a journal paper. However, I am not really sure yet about the topic for my project or whether I should do applied or pure research. Finding a team will also be tough. What do you guys suggest I should do?