Neel Nanda MATS Applications Open (Due Aug 29)

By Neel Nanda @ 2025-07-30T00:55 (+20)

This is a linkpost to https://tinyurl.com/neel-mats-app

TLDR

Table of Contents

The key details and FAQ are copied below for convenience, the rest are in the doc

Key Details

FAQ

Application Task Details

Advice on producing a good application in 20 hours

What does a good application look like?

Recommended research problems

FAQ (Extended)

Key Details

FAQ

Why might you want to apply?

Why is this application so much effort?

What am I looking for in an application?

What happens in the program?

What happens if I don’t get through to the research phase?

Why shouldn’t I apply?

How should I choose a problem?

Can I use LLMs?

How does a research supervisor add value?

See a bunch more info and guidance in the other tabs of the doc


  1. Other MATS apps open in late August ↩︎

  2. In my 4 most recent cohorts, I’ve had 3 independent researchers, 9 ML PhD students/recent PhD grads, 7 undergrads, 3 ML masters students, 5 former software engineers, 1 physics PhD student, 1 ML postdoc, 1 neuroscience postdoc, 2 quant traders, and 1 former entrepreneur ↩︎

  3. Note that almost all scholars in recent cohorts have published at least one co-first author conference, and many of the 30 papers are too recent to have finished peer review - list here. But my top priority is to help you do great research, publishing is a bonus. ↩︎

  4. I'm not just saying this because I work for Google! It's a frontier model, it's free, it's pretty fast, and it can take a million tokens of context. The best paid models from other providers are also great choices but can’t take as much context. ↩︎

  5. It starts with a table of contents explaining what’s in it. ↩︎