Masters in Environmental Science & Management

You will be required to upload transcripts from all institutions you’ve attended to your application. These uploaded transcripts are required to be official documents created by the university but can include "unofficial" transcripts that are generated by an online student portal -- as long as the transcripts include the name of the student, the institution, the grades, and a grading scale.

We would appreciate your recommenders' personal impressions of your intellectual ability, aptitude in research, and professional skills. Please ask your recommenders to comment on your character, quality of previous work, and promise of productive scholarship, among other important aspects. The most successful letters are ones where the recommender clearly understands the student's previous professional and academic accomplishments, can comment on the student's preparedness for graduate-level studies and can make a connection between the student's future goals and the MESM program. It is beneficial to provide at least one letter from a faculty member who is familiar with your academic abilities. We realize this may be difficult if you have been out of school for a number of years. If this is not possible, you can provide letters from professionals in supervisory or managerial roles who can attest to your scholarly ability and potential, creativity, dedication, and work performance, among other attributes.

In your Personal History Statement, please describe any aspects of your personal background, accomplishments, or achievements that you feel are important in evaluating your application for graduate study. This is your chance to describe if you have experienced economic challenges or any unusual or varied life experiences that might contribute to the diversity of the graduate student population. Examples include but are not limited to the following: lived experience as part of an under-represented group, being financially responsible for family members or dependents, having to work significant hours during undergraduate schooling, coming from a family background of limited income, speaking multiple languages, or living in bicultural communities. You may also include any academic research interests focusing on cultural, societal, or educational problems as they affect under-served segments of society, or if you have intentions to use your graduate degree toward serving disadvantaged individuals or populations. It may also be a good opportunity to address any discrepancy in your application (e.g. low grades or gaps in your resume). If you wish, you may discuss any discrepancy in the Personal Statement essay to help the admissions committee better understand what circumstances might have affected your academic or professional performance at the time. If you experienced any challenges related to COVID-19, this section would be an appropriate place to indicate them. Please explain how you’ve addressed the issue(s) and why you are prepared now to be successful in a rigorous graduate school program. The Personal History Statement must be written in narrative (essay) form without duplicating content from the Statement of Purpose (SOP) and it must have a minimum word count of at least 250 words.

While work experience is not a requirement for admission, it is highly valued and significantly strengthens your application. Although professional experience in the environmental field suggests that your goals are well-matched to the Bren School, we also highly value experience in other professional settings provided you have an environmental background through other means, such as coursework. If your experience is in an area that is not related to environmental science, make sure to provide an explanation in your Statement of Purpose that clearly conveys your reasons for embarking on a new environmentally-related career path. Please include all relevant academic, work, volunteer, or leadership experience. Formatting style (e.g., line spacing, typeface, and font size) is up to your discretion.

The Statement of Purpose essay is your chance to explain why you want to attend a graduate program and earn a MESM degree from the Bren School at UC Santa Barbara. You should include your specific area of interest, providing an analysis of an environmental issue and how it relates to your ambitions. Explain how your past experiences have prepared you for a rigorous graduate program and how the MESM program will help you achieve your professional goals. Please review the UCSB Graduate Division’s statement prompts before applying. There is no specified word limit for the Statement of Purpose or the Personal History and Diversity Statement; however, the prompt does say "brief statement" and the average document size we see is around two pages in length so it is recommended to not make it too much longer than that. UC Santa Barbara accepts PDF and Microsoft Word (.doc and .docx) documents for upload in the online application. The maximum file size allowed is 4 MB per document.