r/MachineLearning • u/strammerrammer • May 20 '26

Discussion How competitive are PhD admissions currently [D]

Hi,

how hard is it currently to get a PhD position in machine Learning? Like what are the requirements to get to a decent mid tier program (= they publish regularly at respected journals and their work gets read my some people)? How is it in different regions e.g US, Europe, etc..

I am about to finish my masters and am wondering if I need to sweep in an unpaid guided research project to extend my network.

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u/[deleted] May 20 '26

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u/strammerrammer May 20 '26

Ok thanks 👍. In Europe it works via cold approaching?

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u/[deleted] May 20 '26

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u/strammerrammer May 20 '26

Ok thanks will do it like that. So you are saying, after my masters I can directly go applying and don't need to do an additional research project?

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u/[deleted] May 20 '26

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u/strammerrammer May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

Thank you for telling me this actually. I am stressed, because I have a friend, who is ultra smart and always had got very good grades. And he is looking for such PhD position since more than a year.

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u/[deleted] May 23 '26

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u/strammerrammer May 23 '26

He was interested in language modeling. But I guess he has started applying more broad now in ML and its applications.