While I agree the application process needs improvement, I think this entry greatly exaggerates how hard it is to get into a PhD program. Since when do you need to be published to even get into a PhD program? When I went through the application process, I got accepted by 6/6 schools that I applied to, with no publications and no real ideas for what I wanted to research on. In fact, most PhD students actually don't even have a research topic until the second or third year of grad school. I think more than anything, your personal statement is the deciding factor in a lot of cases. What had worked for me was to have a list of research topics and faculty from each school that you're interested in working with, and directly address them in your statement. Other than that, of course whatever supporting evidence to differentiate yourself is helpful. I thought proposing to use offer letters from Google or YC (both have much lower acceptance rates than a PhD program) just to prove you can code is pretty hilarious.
These days, good luck getting in a top tier institution for CS without a solid track record (I.e. a publication or two at an ACM/IEEE conference, and letters of rec from reputable professors/researchers in your field). The letters of rec are what make or break your application.
I agree that it's a bit over the top, but that's how it is.
2005, Berkeley, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UIUC, and my alma mater UT Austin. Ended up at Cal. Granted, I was EE and admitted as EECS, so maybe a bit different.
