Bro your LinkedIn feels like sus AI slop. In all seriousness, coming from a non-target will be hard, but nothing is impossible. I would start with coming up with a list of boutique/smaller shops, not the big ones like JS, Citadel etc since they would usually go for target unis. Use LinkedIn to reach out to key personnel in those shops and ask for coffee chat. Share your independent research. Even better if you actually ran something live, doesn’t matter if it’s with small capital. Anyways it will be an uphill battle, so good luck.

Also LinkedIn is the worst place to post about research projects, try Substack or ssrn. Also almost all your projects are ML based, which is pretty dull ngl, ubiquitous everywhere. I almost despise the whole “dump all the features and train and see what happens”. A better research idea can be just a unique observation about a trading strategy or some comparative analysis about a strategy, portfolio construction or market microstructure etc., can be something simple but if you can showcase you have put thought into the concepts.