r/MachineLearning June 20, 2026 · Communities

Would you let an ML PhD student graduate without a top-tier paper? [D]

Suppose you’re a PhD advisor in machine learning. Your student has been in the program for 4 years, has done solid work, and has a coherent thesis direction but they haven’t published in an A*ML venue or top journal. No NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR/CVPR/etc., and no equivalent top venue in their subfield either but 3 First author