Undergrad with 4 Pubs but <70% GPA - chances?

[Projekts]

As title states:

I am a  3rd year Canadian undergraduate student with 2 primary author and 2 co-author papers in high impact factor journals in my field including Scientific Reports. BUT I've maintained a undergrad GPA of ~70% over my 3 and 1/2 years. No excuses here, I'm not engaged in school but I love doing research and I excel at it. 

Have I given up on the potential prospects of grad school? How are my prospects for going to an MS or PhD in engineering or physics in Canada/Ontario?

Thanks for the input all. 

Edited December 14, 2019 by Projekts

[Walfred]

Although in different fields might be slightly different, but based on what I heard, Scientific Report is generally not considered as one of the top journals or even a prestigious one. 

However, I believe having four publications in any decent journal is indubitable excellent. Maybe you should start to contact your POI to see if they have any interest in you, and I believe many of them might do. 

[Projekts]

9 minutes ago, Walfred said:

Although in different fields might be slightly different, but based on what I heard, Scientific Report is generally not considered as one of the top journals or even a prestigious one. 

However, I believe having four publications in any decent journal is indubitable excellent. Maybe you should start to contact your POI to see if they have any interest in you, and I believe many of them might do. 

Yes. Unfortunately Scientific Reports accepts publications based off of scientific validity and not impact/significance of the work. Many see this as the "Didn't make the cut of other Nature journals Nature journal". 

My concern is that these publications don't offset my poor performance in school. My PI doesn't believe I have the grades for grad school unfortunately - which is actually the root of this concern. 

[Walfred]

1 hour ago, Projekts said:

Yes. Unfortunately Scientific Reports accepts publications based off of scientific validity and not impact/significance of the work. Many see this as the "Didn't make the cut of other Nature journals Nature journal". 

My concern is that these publications don't offset my poor performance in school. My PI doesn't believe I have the grades for grad school unfortunately - which is actually the root of this concern. 

Maybe you should take more classes and show your improvement. I do not understand, why you are able to publish so many journals but cannot even handle the easiest and most basic thing in school. Just have last two year’s grades > 85, then you will be fine. 

Also, I feel like compared with having four publications on Scientific Report, even one publication on median journal like Nature communication as a top author would be more useful. Some people especially some scholars with good reputation might think this is not a good sign. About 1/3 of my projects were not published to make sure they would not deprave my publication list (or my PIs...), but if you just want to go to any graduate school, I feel it is fine just make sure they are decent. 

 

[scytoo]

I think it really depends on your grading scale - from what I remember Canada is pretty similar to Australia, in that 70% is not that bad of a grade, perhaps a solid B depending on where you are. Whether it'll hold you back depends on a lot of factors.

Do you have to do classes during a PhD in Canada (or wherever you're applying to)? If so, having a poor theoretical background is a definite kiss of death because you won't be able to keep up. Are those poor grades in classes that are directly relevant to your area of research? If so, you might be good at the mechanical aspects of research but once you have to start designing your own projects from scratch and coming up with lines of enquiry, a bad background will stifle you. In those cases you'll want to go for a Masters first.

But if your worst grades are in somewhat unrelated courses and you have a strong upwards trend, it might not hold you back too much. You won't get into the best programs and you might not get funding, but you could get admitted to some PhD program somewhere. It depends whether that's what you want to do, or if you'd rather put it off until after Masters when you're more competitive and prepared.