Yeah, I was being a bit careless by saying that an MS was required. Your comment is certainly more representative of the field as a whole than mine. More and

Yeah, I was being a bit careless by saying that an MS was required. Your comment is certainly more representative of the field as a whole than mine. More and more schools seem to be heading towards PhD only for graduate geoscience programs (which is a mistake, i.m.o.). A lot of professors at Wisconsin were strongly pushing for it while I was there, though an equal number were opposed. I also think there's a large benefit to doing a separate MS, preferably at a separate institution. (If nothing else, it dramatically increases your breadth of experience.) At any rate, I certainly agree with you. Having an MS makes it much easier to get into competitive PhD programs. Also, an MS is a common working degree for a large number of geoscientific jobs, so there's a strong demand for industry-focused MS graduates. For those reasons (and not because a B.S. doesn't have enough coursework, i.m.o.), separate MS and PhD degrees are very common in the geosciences