Welcome. My name is William White, and I am the Director of Graduate Studies for Geological Sciences. The Graduate Program here at Cornell is directed toward producing first-class scientists operating on the cutting edge of geoscience research. It is a flexible program that is individually tailored to each student, and takes advantage of Cornell's strength in interdisciplinary education.

The faculty constituting the Graduate Field at Cornell includes not only those members in the Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences but faculty from a number of other academic units as well, including Civil and Environmental Engineering, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Astronomy, and Materials Science. Moreover, students may select faculty advisors representing minor specialties from virtually any academic Department at Cornell.

Useful information about how the graduate program works can be found in our Graduate Handbook. Below are also links to information about how to apply through the Graduate School, potential sources of funding and the various research projects in which our graduate students participate ( by the way, my own research specialty is geochemistry). And, of course, the Cornell University homepage is a good place for general information about the University as a whole.

As always, I and the other faculty in the Graduate Field are available to discuss our program with you by phone, e-mail, fax, carrier pigeon .... Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions that you might have.

Like most web pages, this one continues under development. If there is information which you would like to see, please do not hesitate to send your suggestions to me at wmw4@cornell.edu.

How to Apply

We accept applications on-line via the Cornell Graduate School Web page. You should specify the "Field of Geological Sciences" as there is no graduate field of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences. In your essay, please indicate clearly the discipline(s) within Geological Sciences in which you are interested (e.g., "active tectonics," "low temperature geochemistry," "global change," etc.). You essay, and indeed your entire application, will be stronger if you have carefully investigated Cornell's strengths via these web pages and individual faculty pages, the published literature, and have contacted individual faculty with whom you might be interested in working.

Visiting the Department

We strongly encourage all perspective graduate students to visit our department. Most visits take place between December and March of the academic year prior to the one which you wish to enter. Please arrange your visit in advance by contacting the professor with whom you would like to work, William White the Director of Graduate Studies, or Carolyn Clark the Graduate Program Coordinator. We will then set up a schedule of people for you to talk with, both faculty and graduate students.

Financial Aid

Information on Cornell tuition and fees can be found on the Cornell Graduate School web page. There are a variety of forms of Financial Aid available to graduate students a Cornell. In general, we provide four years or more of tuition and stipend to graduate students in good standing. The applicant does not need to specify the form of support that they want; we distribute the forms of support internal to Cornell based on needs and resources. Here, we list only the most common forms of support:

• Department Fellowships — The EAS department generally awards two fellowships in geological sciences each year, known as the Long Fellowship and the McMullen Fellowship. Traditionally, these are given to the most deserving incoming graduate students. These fellowships are awarded for a single year, with the assumption that the recipients will segue onto other forms of support for subsequent years. Fellowships provide tuition, a full year of health insurance, and academic year (nine month) stipend.
• Cornell Fellowships — The Field of Geological Sciences usually has available to it one of Cornell's prestigious university wide graduate fellowships. Further information can had at the Graduate School.
  
• Teaching Assistantships (TA's) — Students with TA's receive full tuition, health insurance, and academic year stipend in exchange for 20 hours a week assisting with the teaching of courses in the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences department. This teaching experience is vital to those wishing to go on to a teaching career and it is likely that many graduate students will be TA's at some point during their Cornell career.
• Graduate Research Assistantships (GRA's) — Most graduate students in Geological Sciences are supported as GRA's on one of their professor's externally funded research projects. The research carried out is commonly, though not always, directly related to their thesis research. GRA's commonly provide full tuition, health insurance, and academic year stipend; most also provide summer stipend.
• National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships — We encourage all applicants and first year graduate students to apply directly to NSF for these prestigious and competitive graduate fellowships.
• NASA Fellowships — Graduate students commonly apply for these fellowships after their first year, when their research project has become well-defined.
• Other fellowships — We occasionally have students supported on Department of Energy or Department of Defense fellowships.