Starting off point for earth and environmental sciences applications

[Kitkat]

I have already gotten past this point for myself, but I think that it might be a good thing for future applicants. Basically, what resources (other then thegradcafe.com), have people used in order to start looking for programs that might be a place that they want to apply to. I think it could be helpful, since this is one of the smaller fields out there, and therefore, harder for students who are applying to find information. I feel that the process is nerve racking enough as is.

So I will start it off with a few resources of my own, including some stuff for the sub field I am interested in.

http://geosociety.org/members/student.htm

http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/earth-sciences/rank/_M_M_____M________M_____________________M_______________________U

And since I am more interested in geobiology/paleo, these were also good resources for me:

http://www.paleosoc.org/

http://www.vertpaleo.org//AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home

[waddle]

I browsed through a lot of Nature, Science, and PNAS tables of contents, and skimmed through the titles that caught my eye. If anything looked interesting, I would look up a review on the topic to see who the major players in the research area were. Pretty soon, you start to see patterns in author citations, and you can get a small glimpse into the politics of the field.

[katerific]

AGU has a nice directory of universities that have programs in specific areas. This is a good place to start (especially early on), I'd say.

AGU also has Eos, a newspaper with job listings as such. Usually they're for people already with PhDs, I believe, but you also get ads for PhD positions and lab assistants.

I did the same thing that waddle did, essentially, although it may be daunting if you don't know what to search for in those journals. In that case (or in any case, really), I'd recommend looking at AGU journals. These are more specialized, so you can name a topic you generally like (like geophysics, for example) and browse away.

My professors also recommended a number of people and universities, of course.

[InquilineKea]

http://www.quora.com...s+for+planetary

(guide I wrote to resources there).

I come from the exoplanetary atmospheres/astrobiology route though, so my route is kind of different. Mostly I look at professors who are connected with atmospheric science professors I know (I also email professors who are in the field, and ask them for suggestions). And I google authors of papers that I find interesting (not only from the journals, but also the science magazines). The science magazines are actually pretty good at identifying the people who are doing pretty phenomenal research.

Edited August 11, 2011 by InquilineKea