The Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences offers graduate studies leading to the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Geology. Students with degrees in geology, any other natural science, or engineering are invited to apply.
Research within the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences is funded by grants and contracts from NSF, DOE, PRF, and other federal, state, and industrial sources. Areas of graduate research are in fields covered by regular and adjunct faculty, including coal geology, hydrogeology, stratigraphy, petrology, geophysics, and tectonics.
Admission Requirements
Admission to pursue an M.S. or Ph.D. degree requires a bachelor’s degree, a minimum grade point average of 2.75, three letters of reference and results from the verbal, quantitative, and analytical Graduate Record Examination (GRE). TOEFL scores are required for international applicants. For more details, please consult Admissions Information and Assistantships and Fellowships.
Admission criteria include GPA, GRE scores, prior course work, letters of reference, previous experience, and match with faculty research interests. This program requires an undergraduate GPA of at least 3.0 on all undergraduate and graduate work. For international applicants, we require that applicants rank in the top 25% of their graduating classes.
GRE must be taken, but there is no minimum score. Applicants who score at least 75th percentile on one category of the GRE and who have (a) an overall undergraduate GPA of 3.30, (b) a GPA of 3.60 for the last 60 credit hours of undergraduate work, or (c) a GPA of 3.80 for a completed master’s degree (in each case from a US institution) are eligible for a Pirtle Fellowship, which provides $3,000 in summer salary. Most applicants have a “standard” geology background, but strong students with backgrounds in the sciences and engineering are also admitted. Spoken English proficiency is important because many of our graduate students are employed as teaching assistants (in particular, as laboratory instructors). For international applicants, the Graduate School requires a minimum score of 550 on the TOEFL (213 on the computerized version; 79 on the internet-based version) or 6.5 on the IELTS. We typically only consider admission to the PhD program after completion of a master’s degree either here at UK or at another US or European institution. Students who are deficient in one or more respects may be admitted provisionally or as non-degree students by action of the Graduate Committee. Your chances of admission are better if you’ve identified faculty members with whom you might work. We recommend you consult our faculty research specialties at https://ees.as.uky.edu/faculty and directly contact faculty in your areas of interest.
Degree Requirements
The Doctor of Philosophy in Geological Sciences requires candidates complete at least 36 hours of prequalifying graduate course work, including that taken for a master’s degree (which counts for 18 hours) and at least 2 semesters of EES 767 following the qualifying exam. Ph.D. students must take 3 credits of EES 695 (Scientific Communication), unless they have already completed these requirements as a student in the M.S. program. The normal full-time load is 3 courses (usually 9-10 credits) each semester, and no more than 12 credits per semester should be taken. Individual Work in Geology (EES 782 ) and Research in Geological Sciences (EES 790 ) will include data collection (field, laboratory, and/or library) and must not duplicate dissertation research. A research plan must be approved by a faculty member, who will direct the research, as well as the DGS. The faculty member who directed the research will provide a final evaluation of the project. The evaluation will be conveyed to the DGS.
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