Course Information

The undergraduate course is a blend of lectures, practical classes, tutorials and field trips. Lectures and practicals all take place within the Earth Sciences building. 

Lectures are taught by our Faculty and usually last one hour. Most lecture courses have associated practical classes, which take place in our teaching labs and often involve a variety of activities: studying rock or fossils specimens, using microscopes for petrographic study, analysing or drawing geological maps, or carrying out computational exercises. Practical classes are led by lecturers, but supported by postgraduate demonstrators who are on hand throughout the sessions to answer your questions and provide support. Alongside your lectures and practicals you will have small group teaching within your college groups (two to four students) in the form of ‘tutorials’.

Tutorials are small group teaching sessions, with your college group. They typically involve you meeting up about once a week with your college tutor and the other Earth Sciences students within your college year group (two to four students). Tutorials offer the opportunity to ask your tutor questions about the course material and to discuss topics that go beyond your lecture material. They are designed to both challenge you intellectually but most importantly support you through the learning process. Tutorials are fairly unique to Oxford and a really great system as they allow you to get to grips with your course and further your understanding in a way that you might not be able to on your own or in a large class environment. 

Earth Sciences places a stronger emphasis on maths, quantitative skills and the science underlying processes on Earth, hence our course requirements for Maths and one of Physics or Chemistry. Our course spans across many topics related to scientific understanding of the Earth and other planets, including climate, geology, the atmosphere, oceans, volcanic processes, palaeontology, natural resources, and many others. This overlaps with some areas of Physical Geography and Biogeography.

Absolutely! You will spend the 1st and 2nd Year of your course learning the fundamentals and key principals across a broad range of topics in Earth Sciences, but have the option to really hone in on your areas of interest in your 3rd and 4th Years, when you can choose the course modules you would like to study. This may be oceanography and climate, tectonics and geophysics, computational earth sciences, palaeobiology, or volcanoes and earthquakes. In your 4th Year, students undertake and independent research project of their choice. This offers the opportunity to carry out real, cutting edge research alongside academic staff. Depending on your area of interest and project choice, this may be research carried out through field work, laboratory experiments, or using sophisticated modelling or computational software.

Our students have a range of different fitness levels. When constructing the field courses we have thought carefully about how to accommodate this, and while a very basic level of fitness is ideal, we always take into account the requirements of individual students on a day-to-day basis, depending on the planned activities. We don’t put our students in a position where they have to climb any outcrops. If at any point prior to or during the field course, students have any concerns, we actively encourage them to speak to the trip leader of our friendly team in the academic office.

A degree in Earth Sciences can lead you almost anywhere! Some of the most highly valued skills that Earth Sciences graduates develop during the course of their degree are critical thinking, the ability to work independently and as part of a team, to analyse data at a planetary and microscopic scale, and to know how to apply knowledge from other sciences, particularly in a numerate way, in order to problem solve. These skills are highly valued by employers from a wide range of sectors and our graduates go on to successful careers in the environmental, resource exploration, finance, risk management, research and teaching sectors, amongst many others.

This depends entirely on your choice of career and many of our graduates go on to careers in applied geosciences without additional degrees. For some jobs in for example, geotechnical engineering, it can be helpful to complete a further master’s degree in your specialist field, although bear in mind that many companies also offer graduate training programmes where you would receive this equivalent training on the job. If you know which sector you might be interested in pursuing a career, you can find out more about the entry level requirements through the University Careers Service website.