Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Areas of study include, but are not limited to:  Ecosystem Conservation and Management; Forestry, Forest Science and Forest Management; Business and the Environment; Climate Science, Adaptation and Mitigation; Energy and the Environment; Environmental Policy Analysis; Human Dimensions of Environmental Management; Sustainable Land Management; Sustainable Urban and Industrial Systems; and Water Resources Management. Students are not limited to a declared focal area in choosing their classes.

For more information on the courses required to complete each degree, please see the Masters Degrees page, which details each program’s curriculum.

Please note that admission materials should be submitted online. If you must send materials through the mail, please use the following address:

Office of Admissions and Financial Aid Office
Yale School of the Environment
300 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
USA

The submission of the GRE, GMAT, or LSAT score is optional at this time.  All parts of an application are evaluated to determine the candidate’s qualifications for our program.

Yale School of the Environment welcomes individuals from a variety of undergraduate and professional backgrounds. While undergraduate science and/or math courses are not a prerequisite for admission, they are highly recommended. Coursework work (at least two courses each) in ecological patterns and processes (such as general ecology, biodiversity science, population or community ecology, ecosystem science or ecosystems ecology) physical sciences (such as earth science covering geosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere, environmental chemistry, climate science), the social sciences (such as environmental governance, environmental anthropology, environmental history, environmental justice, environmental sociology, human geography, political ecology, religion and ecology), and microeconomics prepare students to take greater advantage of courses at the graduate level. For this reason, the Committee on Admissions favors applicants who have successfully completed a combination of these courses.

• Completion of an undergraduate degree. Whatever your major, introductory coursework in the biological, physical, and social sciences, plus college mathematics, is preferred.
• Achievement and integrity in your academic and/or professional career.
• Established commitment to professional and/or scholarly engagement in environmental issues, whether at the local, national, or global scale; two or more years of experience post-baccalaureate is a plus.
• Promise of a future career as an environmental leader.
• Demonstrated capacity for critical, creative, entrepreneurial, and strategic thinking.

MESc and MFS applicants must identify up to three faculty members as potential research advisors at the time of application. Within the application, you will be asked to submit a short explanation as to why you would like to work with each potential advisor (one short paragraph per faculty member). This is because the research degree programs require a more in-depth thesis project, and these potential advisors are given the opportunity to review your application file before they accept you as a research student. For this reason, applicants are encouraged to contact prospective advisors when they apply to the Yale School of the Environment.

For the MEM and MF degrees, no selection of a faculty advisor is needed during the application process. These students are assigned an advisor once they arrive on campus in order to help design a course of study, but we also encourage you to collaborate with many faculty members to put together a program that best suits your interests. Of course, if there is a faculty member whose research is of particular interest, prospective students are welcome to ask that person to be their advisor.

Tuition rates are the same for all students, whether you are a CT resident, U.S. citizen, or an international student. For the 2019-2020 academic year, the tuition rate is $43,570 a year, with an additional $21,150 estimated for books, health insurance and living expenses. For more information on the cost of attendance, please see the Financial Aid website.

Yale School of the Environment (YSE) graduates find jobs in the non-profit, private, public, and academic sectors. The Career Development Office at YSE offers a number of services to help you find your internship, a job after graduation, and positions later in your career. Among other things, the CDO website contains extensive employment data on past internship organizations and places of employment immediately following graduation.

Yale School of the Environment representatives spend much of the months of September, October and November traveling to cities around the country to meet with prospective students. Information sessions are open to all prospective students and are excellent ways to learn about the Yale School of the Environment if you are unable to travel to New Haven to meet with representatives on campus. In addition, representatives attend a number of Idealist, conference, and college/university graduate school fairs, where you can also meet with an admissions representative. To see if a representative will be in your area and to sign up for an event, please see our Admission Events website.

Deferral Policy

As a policy, the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) does not typically grant enrollment deferral requests that will allow you to defer admission to a later year and instead asks you to reapply. (i.e. Requests for financial reasons, educational reasons, professional opportunities, etc.).

The Yale School of the Environment will only consider enrollment deferral requests for the following reasons:

• Fulbright Scholarship
• Extenuating serious Medical Emergency

In the event a deferral request is approved, the deferral will only be granted for a one year time period. Requests for deferral must be submitted in writing via the YSE Official Deferral Request Form with relevant supporting documentation. Please contact the admissions for more information: admissions.yse@yale.edu.