Graduate

Understanding our planet will be a fundamental challenge for the scientific community over the next century. Almost every practical aspect of society—population, environment, economics, politics—is and will be increasingly impacted by our relationship with the Earth. Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS) is dedicated to facing these challenges and offers outstanding opportunities for students who wish to pursue graduate studies.

The EPS Department features a world-class faculty, state-of-the art laboratories, instrumentation and facilities, and a friendly, collaborative culture that is committed to the education and training of its graduate students. Whether you are engaged in bench-work, conducting field research, or simply enjoying complimentary coffee and cookies in the student lounge, you will find EPS to be an exciting and engaging experience. What's more, EPS students enjoy the advantages of being part of the larger Harvard community as well as the Greater Boston metropolitan area.

Our graduate students enter with diverse undergraduate preparation, with majors in Earth Sciences as well as Applied Math, Biology, Chemistry, Engineering and Physics. Graduate study and research within EPS are equally diverse, and include geology, geobiology, geochemistry, geophysics, physics and chemistry of climate, planetary science, tectonics, and more. Many undergraduates exposed for the first time to the Earth sciences find that this field provides the combination they've been looking for: one that is sophisticated, interdisciplinary, and offers societal relevance.

We encourage you to take the time to become familiar with our department. Please read the Graduate Student Handbook for details about program requirements, and review our study and research areas to learn about suggested curriculum plans based on your interests.