Chance me + want advice

[AhmedEECS]

Hello,

I am a sophomore/junior at Pennsylvania State University in Computer Engineering. I plan to graduate in three years and I am conducting undergrad research. My cumulative GPA is 3.74/4.00. I want to attend grad school at a top 10-25 program in Machine Learning if possible. I wanted some advice on things I could do that could make me stand out and if shooting for top 10-25 programs is practical.

Thanks

[546525]

Get a paper published in NIPS/ICML/ICLR/CVPR. This will get you into any program you want. Even if you GPA or GRE score is terrible a publication in a top tier journal in machine learning will override anything.

[excelle08]

Wondering your class rankings, given my knowledge of GPA inflation in some American universities. If a number of students in your class have a GPA of 4.0/4.0, you ought to catch up by working hard on the following courses to achieve higher GPA.

Please note that the direction/track of Machine Learning has been a hit these years and therefore application for it could be EXTREMELY fiercely competitive. So If you would like to stand out among other applicants you MUST try to get as many papers published in top-tier conferences such as CVPR/AAAI/NIPS/ICML/ICLR as possible. One published paper in FAST or EuroSys or HPCA or ATC may lead to offers in System/Architecture directions from high ranked schools, it might not be the case for CV/ML/AI. One CVPR may not ensure safety for top30 PHD programs in these tracks. So you must try your utmost on your undergraduate researches and get as many quality papers as possible (three might be desirable).

Good luck and fighting!

Edited January 6, 2018 by excelle08
fix wrong things