ML PHD without A* Publications [D]

Excerpt

I know top ML PhD admissions are insanely competitive, so I’m trying to figure out if it’s even worth applying or if I should just focus seriously on jobs instead. For context, I’m doing my MS at a top-15 US university and have been doing ML research for a while. I’m first author on my projects and mostly work independently, with some guidance from my PI. I had a first-author NeurIPS submission rejected, and I currently have another first-author paper submitted to ICLR, but I’m honestly not very