I am a CS undergrad currently thinking about my post grad application. I have a couple of questions.
So far, I published 2 first author papers, one in SODA, and one in VLDB. However, they're on two totally different topics (One on compression algorithms [theory], one on graphs [DB related])
I recently (last year) started getting interested in Machine Learning and specifically reinforcement learning, and have been spending a whole lot of time on it. I decided I want to apply to a PhD in that field.
Would my unrelated previous research papers add any positive thing to my application, or would it just be better to apply to a PhD that relates to my my published papers?