Doing Independent Research as Distance Learner

Hi,
I posted somewhere before in this forum, that I have a plan to have a fully-funded PhD in the USA in Machine Learning things.
My goal is in the top-20 university.
My first bachelor GPA is only 3.2 out of 4. Not really great.
I am doing another bachelor's at Indonesian Open University and a master's. Both programs are distance learning programs. So it is not really a research degree. I have no one to talk to join a research program.
I realize that all of the university is asking for research experience and some asking for published research reports for a fully-funded PhD program.

Anyone have independent research experience and getting it published in a respected journal?
I found an article that really resonated with me: https://medium.com/@andreas_madsen/becoming-an-independent-researcher-and-getting-published-in-iclr-with-spotlight-c93ef0b39b8b

Please share your thought!

 

I am not a PhD expert and can only speak to business programs.

While research experience may bolster an application, the lack of it should not be detrimental if you have other factors that strengthen your application. Most programs understand that not everyone has the opportunity to conduct research and even fewer have the opportunity to be published before heading into a PhD program.

In business, again, not your field, most people who go into a fully-funded PhD come straight out of their MBA program and have very little, if any, business research experience.

My suggestion to you would be to find the PhD programs you are interested in and reach out to their admissions teams to see if you can get more detailed information about class profiles. This would show you some pretty good information to stack yourself up against.

Also, while most Universities have some sort of rigor associated with them, top Universities are on a different level, in my experience. I breezed through my Bachelors and MBA. My MS at Duke is intense, face-paced and “almost” overwhelming, which is the level of difficulty they said they aim for. It’ll be well worth it though!

 

It's a STEM field, Steve. A spot in a top 20 program, if one can get in, WILL be funded. Even for international students. Most PhD students are international anyway.