I'm probably thinking of a couple ms programs. I have graduated so any other ways to do research with profs and gain relevant experience since I've been out of school for a couple years now?

Text or sentiment analysis. Particular in application to issues such as psychological issues or those in education.

See my reply to another comment, most of the roles I've applied to are either insanely competitive or for other fields like economics.

I have heard of and applied to Allen AI at least a couple of times but coming from a Top 40 undergrad these are people from like top 20 if not top 10 undergrads who get into this.

For the other website that's more for economics students where pre-docs are more common. I have also applied to a few of these myself with not much luck. Maybe an ínterview if I'm lucky.

Even then, I still need more (research) experience in ml/nlp if I want to pursue a phd in that area as well as get recommendations for such.

GPA isn't really the priority for me (it's not so deathly low and the reason it's as it is is because of a couple dips feazan and junior years as I said). Gaining more research exp is

(a) as I mentioned in another comment, part of why it was so low was there were a couple dips freshman junior year that I had to recover from. As far as the letters, one of them was from a class I TA'd which I actually failed on the first attempt and had to retake.

(b) undergrads from my program generally only had one ml class with maybe an nlp course offered as special topics. I actually did something unconventional compared to other undergrads but yes this is a valid point. I did take a couple of other AI/Logic/data science related courses but still.

(c) I did have an REU in data science that I did get a recommendation from. Other experiences included working with a professor and later a couple of postdocs on separate (side) projects while I was employed

I have been looking for full-time research related positions but it's more confusing where to look compared to an average software development job. If you have any leads or examples of such RA jobs I'll be happy to hear about them.

I already graduated so not sure if I can still do such (I'm in the US already).

I do have kaggle and I do try looking into such in my spare time.

That's what I'm trying to address is the research experience; I'm trying to find ways that I can gain such experience having already graduated. The GPA is probably the least of my worries since I can't change it (part of the reason it was so low was a dip because of a rough junior year).