<p>I keep reading that biology and chemistry are not good majors if you want a decent job. I haven't seen much about geology on this site. What do you guys think about the job prospects for geology majors? Is geology similar to biology and chemistry in the fact that there are few employment opportunities and too many graduates? I know most of you will mention coal, oil, natural gas as the highest employers of geologists, but what about fields outside of these obvious areas? Anyone familiar with geology job prospects outside of the mentioned industries?</p>
<p>The reason why hiring for biology and chemistry has collapsed, but geology is still doing ok, has to do with their biggest related industries. Hiring is down dramatically in the big pharmaceutical and chemical companies that used to hire specialized biologists and chemists, so more are forced onto the academic track, making hundreds of applications per opening, long strings of postdocs, etc., more common in those fields.</p>
<p>In geology, the big advantage comes from the consistent hiring (at least in the last decade or so) of the oil/gas industry. Note that this is a cyclical industry, so if prices crash, the job market for geologists might tighten considerably. Even if you aren’t interested in the oil/gas route yourself, it siphons off a large enough proportion of graduates that the pressure is eased (relatively speaking) on other branches.</p>
<p>The big 3 traditional career paths for geologists are oil/gas, government, and academia. As I believe has also been mentioned by others, oil/gas has been in a relative hiring boom for a decade. Government jobs have shrunk a bit due to cutbacks in the federal government - they are still hiring, but the competition for these positions has increased considerably. Academia will be competitive no matter where you are.</p>
<p>That being said, there are some less-traditional routes as well. Of these, environmental consulting is probably the most popular. Museums sometimes hire geologists, particularly paleontologists. Environmental public policy takes some geologists, particularly on the climate change and sedimentology sides (coastal hazard mitigation for the latter). Personally, I am working for an insurance company doing catastrophe modeling - figuring out how people are affected by hurricanes, floods, droughts, etc., which is a fairly non-traditional choice as well.</p>
<p>Degree-wise, your options with just a bachelor’s are pretty much limited to water quality monitoring, mudlogging on an oil rig, maybe the odd consulting job with a small firm. Master’s opens you up for the professional careers, and a Ph.D. is required for the heavier academic/research positions. On the bright side, these degrees are typically free - when you are accepted, they cover your tuition and give you a small stipend for working as a TA/RA.</p>
<p>Oh and I forgot, you might look to GeoCorps to dabble in some non-oil geology positions before you finish undergrad. Not much posted right now, since they’re currently only hiring for winter, but their summer projects give you lots of cool options in national parks:</p>
<p>[Geological</a> Society of America - GeoCorps America](<a href=“http://rock.geosociety.org/g_corps/index.htm]Geological”>http://rock.geosociety.org/g_corps/index.htm)</p>
1 Like
<p>Musicguru’s reply was thorough except that he/she did not mention “hard rock” mining as a career path. Geologists will always be needed for mineral exploration (gold, silver, copper, uranium, lead, bauxite, etc). Like oil and gas, this is cyclical, but demand is currently high and there will always be a need for geologists who can identify and map ore bodies.</p>
1 Like
<p>musicguru5 and Pootie, you both have great info about careers in geology so I’m going ask a question that has me awake at night. My son is a geology major at a good LAC. He loves everything about it and talks about getting a job out of college with an oil company for the experience and then going back to graduate school after a couple years. We’re spending a bundle on his undergraduate degree and I’m concerned about how he will fund graduate school, I think he’ll probably go for an MS first. I know PHD programs often fund the accepted students, but is it possible to get similar deals for masters programs? Thanks!</p>
<p>bopambo, it varies depending on where you look, but there are definitely many graduate schools that fund people coming in for a terminal MS. This is particularly true at schools with a big oil and gas contingent (as well as mining, as Pootie rightly points out), as the MS is considered the professional degree for the field. I’m at the University of Texas, where about half of the people coming in are MS students - the only ones not funded are those who are specifically being paid for by their employers (a few percent at most). The situation is similar at Texas A&M, Colorado School of Mines, and a variety of others as well. Also at a school like this, your son could get a ton of oil company experience through oil company internships (the recruiting seasons are nuts, and the internships are all paid…very well), working for oil over the summer while going to school during the year. Just another option for him to think about.</p>
<p>That being said, it is also pretty common to get the MS on the way to a Ph.D. If your son thinks that it is fairly likely he would want to get a Ph.D. eventually, he could apply as a Ph.D. student, while making clear to the advisor that he wishes to get the MS first. Again, a fairly popular choice, and may alleviate the funding situation even further. </p>
<p>Either way, it is pretty unusual to pay your own freight for geology graduate school - so don’t lose TOO much sleep!</p>
<p>I saw from your other posts that your son goes to Whitman, which is a part of the Keck Consortium ([Keck</a> Research Opportunities for Undergraduates | Keck Geology Consortium](<a href=“http://keckgeology.org/]Keck”>http://keckgeology.org/)). He should try to get involved in one of these projects, or an REU project ([US</a> NSF - REU - List Result](<a href=“Search Results for REU Sites | NSF - National Science Foundation”>REU Sites | NSF - National Science Foundation)), to get some research experience. Whitman is certainly well-regarded in the graduate school circuit, but having a full research project like one of these under his belt will only improve his graduate school options.</p>
<p>Hope that helps, and feel free to ask any other questions!</p>
<p>musicguru5, what great information, I really appreciate your response. We are aware of the Keck projects and he’s planning on applying. I’ll forward your post to him. That’s all good news to me!</p>
<p>You mentioned you’re doing catastrophic modeling, which sounds fascinating. Have you gotten an MS, PHD or both?</p>
1 Like
<p>Glad I could help. The LAC’s are great about a lot of things, but considering how many folks they send to grad school, I know I felt a little clueless about the whole process and just sort of muddled my way through. I certainly wish I had known things like, “contact the professors you want to work with,” or, “grad school will be free,” much earlier in the decision-making process than I did.</p>
<p>I am very nearly a Ph.D., since I turned in my dissertation…this week! The catastrophe modeling job starts up in…2 weeks, across the country! I’m sure I’ll feel considerably better about everything once I defend my Ph.D., move out of my house, find a new apartment, move across the country, and start a new job - all on my to-do list this month. Turns out grad school doesn’t slow down, even when it’s finishing up.</p>
1 Like
<p>^^^^Wow, good luck and congratulations!</p>
1 Like
<p>There’s tons of great info on this thread and it answered a lot of my questions! </p>
<p>But to add on, how much traveling is required or expected for the oil/mining career route? I’d like a stable living situation, but I once read that geologists are often hired on a contract basis which means a lot of moving around. </p>
<p>And musicguru, would you compare your degree more to engineering than say environmental science? How much math and chemistry go into your curriculum and career skillset?</p>
<p>Sorry for all the questions, I’m really curious and would love more information!</p>
<p>As far as traveling for oil/gas goes, I would say it varies depending both on the type of position and the state of the industry as a whole. My impression is that upper level research geologists (read: more advanced degrees) move around less. An oil company has invested a lot of money in you at that point, and don’t want to risk letting your training walk out the door. On the other hand, if the industry goes south, research gets cut before production, so geologists seem to lose their jobs more quickly than other positions. Most of the companies have major bases of operations in Houston, though, so even if you leave one you can often pick up in the same location. Opportunities to move (both domestic and international) exist, but that doesn’t mean you’re forced into them as a general rule. If you are very concerned about stability, though, keep in mind that oil/gas is a cyclical business. When it’s good, it’s very good, but when it’s bad, everyone loses their shirts. If the thought of that keeps you up at night, it may not be the ideal field for you.</p>
<p>Also, if it matters to you, oil companies vary greatly in character. I interned for an independent a few years ago, and it was very much a good ol’ boys club - I was one of about 4 women in my whole department of 40-50. And 2 were administrative. On the other hand, some of my good friends have worked for majors (Exxon, Shell, Conoco, BP, etc.) that were well-balanced and generally forward-thinking. Just something to take into consideration if you’re thinking about the lifestyle of an oil/gas career.</p>
<p>And sorry, my information on the mining side is a lot more limited, as it’s just not something I have a ton of experience with. Maybe Pootie or one of my fellow geology lurkers can jump in on that one?</p>
<p>My own degree involved…no engineering whatsoever. A little civil engineering would probably have been useful for my particular job - I feel like an engineer would have a better sense of how well various types of building survive catastrophes than I do. But my focus has been strongly on the earth science side, which is the expertise for which I was hired. My math background goes through Calc 3 (and could have stood to go further), and chemistry, well, I’m a geochemist, so maybe not a fair comparison, haha. Oh, and statistics. Lots of statistics. Mostly self-taught though, so I don’t know what classes it would correspond with.</p>
<p>musicguru5, you’re a woman, wonderful! I’ve met quite a few women pursuing geology since my son got the bug. It makes me very happy that bright capable young women are getting into the branches of science that have traditionally been male bastions. </p>
<p>It’s also great to hear that you are a geochemist, my son came home from a summer field program saying he’d been turned on to the chemical aspects of geology. He’s entering his junior year and is trying to figure out how to get more chemistry classes into his schedule at his small LAC. It’s too late to get as much as he’d like because of limited offerings each semester and he’s brought up the idea of getting a 2nd bachelors in chemistry. That sounds crazy, not to mention expensive, to me. If he applies to graduate geochemistry programs, can’t he just take the prerequisite chemistry classes there, adding on a semester or two?</p>
<p>Thanks for all the great information!</p>
1 Like
<p>Out of the physical sciences, geology seems to have done a better job than most at attracting women to the field. (Outside! Hitting things with hammers! What’s not to love?) My undergraduate department was split down the middle, and graduate was similar. Then again, you can still see vestiges of how much it was once a male-dominated field - at some of the oil companies, as I mentioned, as well as some university departments. My own graduate department had one female professor when I arrived (out of 30-something). Then again, that has improved substantially in recent years through a big hiring push, but the upper levels of career paths still reflect a less-balanced past.</p>
<p>For chemistry classes in undergraduate, holy cow, tell your son he doesn’t need another degree. You add an extra bachelor’s if at the last minute you decide you absolutely hate what you do and want to get a degree in something completely different - not just to enhance your specialty. As an isotope geochemist (studying climate change), I took AP Chem in high school, one real chemistry class in college, plus an elective geochemistry class that I thought sounded cool. The vast majority of my chemistry classes (marine biogeochemistry, environmental isotope geochemistry, etc.) came in graduate school. These classes won’t even add time in graduate school, as they’ll count towards your program of work as a geochemist of any sort. As long as he’s got at least the “one real college chemistry class” part covered, that’s enough to be dangerous.</p>
1 Like
<p>Musicguru, thank you, thank you, thank you! I’m going to send him the info you’ve shared, it’ll give him a more realistic view.</p>
<p>I hope you’ve accomplished your big move and like your new job.</p>
1 Like