I'm an Undergrad student from one of the Indian Institutes of Technology and I still have a year left to complete my Dual-degree course in Computer Science(offers me M.Tech & B.Tech by the end of June 2014). I've a not-so-proud-of gpa of 7.5/10 which is around 3.0/4.0 which I assume is pretty low when compared to my seniors' gpa who've taken up a PhD. But, what I've experienced from a last summer's industry internship and the previous summer working under a professor doing research is that I really can't work in the industry for a longer time writing Software as making money is the least of my concerns. The research work yielded in a rejected publication though I was way more satisfied than the internship
I worked under another professor the next winter, published an article in a highly reputed journal in the field of Complex networks and working on another publication this fall. I'll be working along with IBM in a research internship this summer and hoping to do well. A bit of a late realization haunts me day-to-day. Needless to say, my transcripts suck. So, to dodge all the obstacles that I created myself, I'm planning to do research work extensively for the rest of my Undergrad time. Also, I'm thinking of joining the industry after my graduation for about a year or two before PhD for two reasons. One being, my work experience can be of help and can make up for my poor transcript and second being that I can reinforce the industry-is-not-so-interesting belief. The second being not so important.
So, is pursuing PhD from a reputed university still in my scope? What suggestions can you offer for increasing my chances that I can do during my last year? Reading a lot of questions in this forum site, I believed this might be a good place to vent my rant. Thanks a lot in advance.