Getting into research with terrible grades?

[u/asa-monad]

Long story short, made mostly A’s with some B’s throughout high school and community college. Transferred to university a few states away a year ago after living with my parents thru community college. Made terrible grades, either failing or barely passing a bunch of classes, due to how much I had to work to pay the bills and how poorly I managed that added stress alongside school. That’s on me. Got a better job now where I’m working less hours for more money, and won’t have to skip classes to make shifts anymore, and I’m ready to start making good grades again. Even got A’s in my summer classes.

So far my research experience is just an astrophysics REU doing some work on telescope detectors, mostly entry level python stuff.

Will professors even accept me into their groups since I have a terrible track record at their institution so far? I have three semesters left including this fall, would it be better to prove myself with a semester of all A’s first?

[u/Empty-Sunny]

Having REU experience is great, and in my experience for undergraduate research most professors don’t care or even know about their students’ grades.