Which Areas Do You Find Interesting?
The first thing to do when picking graduate schools is to figure out which area or areas you find most interesting. The first source of inspiration is your undergraduate classes: Are there any topics that seem more interesting than others? You can get both a broader and a more specific view of possible research topics by spending a couple hours each week scanning the articles in past issues of Geology Magazine (Benedum Engineering Library will have paper copies if you prefer paper!) Make a note of the cool topics and the faculty/university who did the work; this is a first indication of the schools you could consider. Finally, check out our faculty web pages to see what research we are doing here. If some seems interesting, contact individual faculty about doing undergraduate research. Not only will this give you a better idea of if you like to do research, but the experience of writing an undergraduate thesis should make writing a graduate thesis much easier. Experience is a great teacher!
Pick a Graduate Program Based On Quality Or Geography?
The next thing to consider is whether you want to pick the university that has the most high-powered research faculty possible or that is in the part of the country you want to live in. To find where the most interesting research is being done in a particular area, talk to the Pitt faculty who most closely share your general interests. Ask them about the best schools in whatever your topic of interest is, and ask them about specific topics of research or research papers that you could look up to learn more. Google Scholar might be helpful, but there are databases that specifically focus on geoscience journals that may well be more useful.
In general, look for a school with several faculty members working in areas related to your interests. This gives you more flexibility in designing exactly the project you want and, if it turns out for some reason that you do not get along so well with your intended advisor, you can switch to another without having to transfer to another school. Advisor switching is normal--just be sure to communicate with all parties involved.
The following book provides excellent practical advice on selecting a graduate school, an advisor or project, and on writing your thesis without going insane and moving to a cabin in Idaho:
Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning a Master's or Ph.D. by Robert L. Peters (1997)
You may feel too busy to read it now, but it is full of hard-won advice that could save you a lot of grief! It comes very highly recommended. Go get it from the library or buy a copy for yourself. Read it this summer, and consult it again and again while you're in graduate school.
Picking a Graduate School by Geography
Apart from family constraints, the best reason to pick a graduate school based on geography is because you want ultimately to get a job in a particular area. Your time in graduate school gives you years to develop relationships with local professional geoscientists, and this can help you score a job when you graduate.
The easiest way to get an overview of the geology graduate schools in a particular region is by checking out an old-fashioned BOOK: The Directory of Geoscience Departments, published by the American Geosciences Institute (AGI). You can instantly get lists of all geoscience departments in each state, plus lists of the faculty in each department and what their specialties are. This one book makes it amazingly easy to see which department are big, which are small, and which have faculty doing roughly what you are interested in. We should have a copy of this book in the department office (SRCC 200). Althought there is an on-line list of all geoscience departments in the United States and Canada, the AGI Directory is ultimately a much more efficient way to get the information you want.