<p>Hi all,
I'm new to the graduate forums. I'm an incoming third year at UC Berkeley doing CS, and I'm at a crossroads: I'm not sure whether I want to go into industry or get into research. I enjoyed working in industry in the past, but as I'm exposed to more research, I'm becoming more interested in pursuing higher education. A bit of background: I'm not very good at taking tests, but I'm not awful with CS -- I feel quite confident about my analytical skills, and I'm strong with concepts. Thusly, upon my adviser's suggestion, I took courses at a pace that I was comfortable with. This left me poised to graduate whenever I please (ie. I finished the CS major, and I'm free to take courses purely for my enrichment). Since I have two years left at Berkeley, I'm going to spend them taking mostly graduate courses and continuing my research. All sounds well, but being a bad test-taker, my undergraduate GPA is an abysmal 3.1. </p>
<p>If you were to chance me under the idea that my undergraduate GPA does not rise much (not sure how grad courses affect my GPA), but I get a publication to OSDI/NSDI/SIG* and maybe USENIX, how do you think I would fare for grad school? </p>
<p>Any honest responses are thoroughly appreciated.</p>