How to get second chance at pursuing honours/PhD if your undergraduate grades are poor in Australia? I recently completed a 3 year bachelor degree in Computer Science at an Australian university. I graduated with a GPA which is roughly the equivalent of a “C” in the US. I only blame the grades on my poor work ethic and wasting time studying content unrelated to my course. The pathway to a PhD in Australia is to do a 3 year Bachelors degree and then complete an honours year which involves a significant research component. 

I emailed the honours coordinator and unsurprisingly, they replied that with my transcript I stand no chance. The only post I found online by someone with similar transcript got the advice that they shouldn’t even be thinking about doing honours and that it is sad enough that people with such low grades get degrees. I have tried to give up my desire to do research (in Machine Learning) because it is naive to think about doing an honours program, let alone harbour any delusions of doing a PhD. 

I know at some point I’ll just have to accept the truth. But before I give up I want to fail one more time - only this time I want to give it my 100%. Is there any way to get a “second chance”? No matter what I do I feel that my transcript will forever haunt me. Even if I somehow found an honours program which would accept me (unlikely) and I managed to get straight A’s, my past grades mean that my average GPA would still be very low.  My fate is sealed, and a criminal record would be less of a burden. I want to work hard but with a best case scenario so grim I don’t know what to do. 

Should I do a second bachelors degree? 
Try to gain research experience (with problematic marks)? 
Or just get a library membership and call it a day?
Regarding your hypothetical argument about getting accepted to honours and good grades there not mattering: if you did get accepted and get great grades in the so-called honours program, It would almost certainly help you far more than by just averaging up your GPA. Universities will notice the upward trend and some will be willing to believe you have turned things around.

More generally, no matter what you do next, poor grades say two things, both of which you need to overcome:


You have poor study habits, hence you'd probably fail out of grad school by doing more of the same, because a "C" average isn't acceptable in grad school.
You didn't learn as much of the material as you should have, and are now behind everyone else who got better grades. And now you will be in over your head in graduate courses which build on those undergraduate courses.


You can address #1 by showing a pattern of improvement in taking new classes and doing well. For #2 you will need to basically learn the material in a second try. If you had non-existant study habits in school with all the support and pressure on you, I don't have too much hope for self-study. I'd suggest finding a way to retake some key classes.

I'd also note that machine learning may be very different than what you expect coming from a computer science background. It is a heavily mathematical subject, where the programming is the easy part. So you may be gaining some edge by focusing on a topic that is more interesting, but you're also doubling-down on what is likely the hardest component of your studies.