UC Santa Barbara Geography / Graduates / Program Description

Application Deadline: December 15th

Applications are accepted for FALL QUARTER ONLY. All applicants are to apply on-line at the Graduate Division website.

Please note that the December 15th date is "received by" and not "postmarked by". Early and complete applications are essential if you are to be properly evaluated.

Please use the proper code on your application to select the correct degree objective: MA, MA/PHD, or PHD

Application Process

For general campus information about admissions and applying to grad school, please visit the Graduate Division website.

The selection criteria for our program is pretty straight-forward. The initial evaluation is done by the department's Graduate Committee which is composed of seven faculty members and the Graduate Program Assistant. The Graduate Committee looks at your academic record as presented in the application and supporting documents, as well as your preparation in the proposed field of study, work experience (if relevant), and the appropriateness of your goals and research interests to those of the program. Selected applications are then made available for review to the entire department faculty. If a faculty member is interested in "sponsoring" an applicant, they let the Graduate Committee know. The Graduate Committee then makes the final decision on admission based on their evaluations of your record in relation to the rest of the applicant pool and whether or not you have a faculty sponsor. Satisfaction of minimal standards does not guarantee admission, since the number of qualified applicants far exceeds the number of places available. As a consequence, many well-qualified applicants cannot be accommodated. All of these steps take between six to eight weeks to complete. It is very important to indicate on your Statement of Purpose which faculty member(s) you are interested in working with and to be specific about which research areas within the broader subject headings of HER, ESS and MMC you are interested in. For example, within ESS you might specify climatology or hydrology; within HER you might specify spatial decision making or urban and regional planning.

A high Jr/Sr undergraduate grade-point average (3.25 or >) is required. The University minimum Jr/Sr GPA for admission is 3.0. All entrants are required to submit verbal, quantitative and analytical GRE scores upon formal application (total combined verbal and quantitative scores should be above 1100). Ideally the test will have been taken within the last five years. The Graduate Division will accept any GRE score, despite the date, as long as either an official report from ETS has been submitted or the Graduate Division has the official score in its database. When you register for the GRE, please use the Institution and Department codes for UCSB Geography (UCSB: 4835, Geography: 2203), otherwise, receipt of your scores could be delayed substantially. Undergraduate preparation in mathematics, statistics, and computer programming is strongly recommended. Applicants whose native language or language of undergraduate or graduate instruction was not English are required to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). The minimum score for consideration is 550 when taking the paper test and 213 when taking the computer test. TOEFL scores must be no more than two years old at the time of admission. Applicants whose native language is not English are required to take the TOEFL. Requests for exceptions to this requirement will be considered for those students who have completed an undergraduate or graduate education at an institution whose primary language of instruction is English.