struggleknot

Ahhh I tend to confuse people when I talk about this, so let me make it relatively clear to say that I worked in an actual research lab this past year (unfortunately, the project only got so far because of unforeseen circumstances), and I'm starting my second year of research in a different lab in the fall. There's also a high probability I will be staying with this lab through my senior year for thesis.

Hello folks! I'm currently a rising junior at a small undergraduate only liberal arts college in the USA. For anonymity's sake, I'm just going to just generally disclose that my science department is very small and somewhat complicated, has no graduate level courses, and has fewer resources per student than a larger university. I want to apply to grad school so I can go after I'm done with undergraduate. However, I know very little about the entire process besides the fact that research is very important. And that's part of the problem. I have a 3.88 cumulative GPA and a >~3.9 chemistry major GPA (physics, am I right?) but I've been rejected from nearly every single lab that I'm interested in within my science department, yes, even my advisor's (twice). I worked with a molecular biology professor for the duration of this school year, and she had to tip me off to an organic synthesis professor whose lab I'll be starting in in the fall. Over the summer, I'm participating in an REU. I guess my question is, can I still get into grad school (any grad school, not just the good ones) if my research situation is... messy? I'm confident that I can maintain my GPA above a 3.8, get decent letters of rec, and have good GRE scores. I'm just worried because I fell off the wagon so many times, and now I feel like no graduate school will take me because of lack of research experience. In addition, I now have little to no idea of what I should concentrate in (leaning towards organic or biochemistry, but still). For reference, I'm thinking about programs like UC Berkeley, Scripps, Caltech, Michigan, and UCLA (I'm a CA resident).