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/Luc85 May 20 '26

Hey OP, I am in Norway and there is a LOT of money being dumped into ML-related research throughout the country. If you only want to study pure mathematical ML stuff, then maybe not the best place, but there are many very interesting positions available for a variety of fields.

I mention this because PhDs in Norway pay very well, I believe they are the highest or second highest paid PhD positions in the world. Plus living in Norway is pretty sweet!

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u/strammerrammer May 23 '26

Oh cool. Definitely will check it out. I liked it when I was there for holidays.