Several ways to get noticed in the application process: * Go to Kaggle and participate in some of their competitions. * Build an ML program from the ground up to help build your portfolio (something like a dog door that only opens to your dog). * Implement a paper from arxiv - try to understand what the paper is about, then download the data set and implement the model they are talking about and see if you get similar results. Then, write a blog post about what you did....