I've attached a list of the materials I used to submit applications to the Masters in Machine Learning Program at CMU (MSML) and the PhD in Machine Learning at CMU, both of which I ended up getting offers from/accepting the offers. As of Summer 2025, I'm currently a PhD student at CMU advised by Jun-Yan Zhu and Ruslan Salakhutdinov. Before asking for recommendations from the professors that I worked with during undergrad/masters, I wrote a summary of my work for each and sent it to them:
- Summary for Jun-Yan Zhu, who I worked on PairCustomization with during my masters (and into PhD)
- Summary for Nina Balcan, who I worked on Theoretical SSL with.
There's already a lot of info about the process at the final link in this readme, so I'll only make some short comments about things I wish I knew during the application process:
I was too worried about immediately having results and changing the world during my initial research project(s). Looking back, I think it's better to focus on being principled in research:
- repeatable experiments
- clean code that makes running many different experiments/metrics/ablations easy
- consistant visuals for result progress
- significant manual inspection of output samples
- clarity of presentations during meetings
- clear communication about what you can/can't do in a certain tie frame
The more you help yourself understand what's going on, the easier it is for others to help you :), and the better your habits will be going forward!
Making sure you write a good summary for your recommenders is super important, and I feel like people overweight SOP and underweight this part of the application process (i.e. helping your recommenders help you). Make sure you spend time on writing down not only the final things that you contributed, but the process as well as your learnings from failures along the way (tbh my summaries could have been better haha, so maybe take them as a lower bound)
For a ton more info, check out this link:
Large Repo with a lot of information on applications from many people