EAPS Graduate Program

The graduate program at the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences aims to educate outstanding young scientists—primarily at the Ph.D. level—for careers in academia, government, and the private sector. Demanding and eye-opening, our program is ranked second in the country for its number of graduates who obtain tenure-track faculty positions in the earth sciences.

EAPS graduate students pursue degrees through programs in geology, geochemistry and geobiology; geophysics; atmospheres, oceans, and climate; planetary science; and the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Joint Program in Oceanography. Through consultation with a department committee and a personal faculty advisor with mutual research interests, each student develops a specialized program of study and research tailored to his or her background, needs, and goals.

Our department’s graduate students have an active professional organization—the EAPS Student Advisory Committee (E-SAC)—that coordinates social activities and organizes a peer mentoring program. In addition, E-SAC works to improve the overall graduate student experience by conferring with the EAPS Graduate Committee, the EAPS faculty in general, and appropriate Institute committees. E-SAC aims to bring the graduate and post-doc community closer together