smallboat

Thank you so much for the great response! I'm in Woods Hole right now trying to meet the faculty and I hope I can get into contact with some. You mentioned that many natural science Ph.Ds don't have good job prospects. What kinds of jobs are many of your classmates who are not interested in continuing academica considering? Nobody in my field has ever mentioned any jobs related to chemical oceanography or geology outside of pure research and its hard to get anywhere beyond vague answers online.

I'm a third year/junior geology major at UChicago who is interested in applying to a chemical oceanography program this fall. Which ones should I apply to? I'm considering WHOI/MIT, Scripps, Columbia, UW Seattle, and Miami Rosenstiel. I'm worried that not being a chemistry major (I haven't taken ochem, ichem, or pchem) and not being from a school with a background in chemical oceanography puts me at a big disadvantage compared to other applicants, especially because I've heard that the schools I'm applying to are super competitive. I changed my major halfway during my undergrad career so I wasn't able to start geochemistry research until the end of my second/sophomore year. As such, I don't have any publications in geochemistry journals. I've done most of my meaningful geochemistry research over the summer and I've only been on one scientific cruise. Should I take a gap year and do more research? In addition, I'm worried that one of the three recommendation letters I'll likely get will not be as strong as the other two since I've done most of my research in ocean sciences with two professors/scientists, but have not done very much research at all with the third, who is not an ocean scientist. Would it significantly hurt my application if not all of my rec letters are equally strong? My grades, GRE, and other stuff is solid; I'm mostly worried whether I'm competitive applicant for chemical oceanography specifically.