What to Expect

Meteorology students don't mind a bit of bad weather -- for them, it's a learning experience. They study changing weather and climate patterns.

Jose Perales started off his meteorology studies at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in an unlikely area -- the department of mechanical engineering. But he says he eventually grew tired of what he was doing in engineering. He needed to switch gears.

"The material was interesting. It just wasn't something that I could do for the rest of my life," he says.

"I've always been interested in meteorology, just never thought about doing it as a career. I decided to look into the meteorology department here at UNL and find out what it was like."

The first thing he noticed -- and was attracted to -- was the small size of the department. He says the professors were friendly. And he felt like more than a face in the crowd.

Switching from a different department into graduate studies in the meteorology department posed some problems for Perales. Graduate students typically have a thesis topic already picked out by the time they get to that level of study. But Perales, being so new to the area, did not. He was permitted to put off choosing until later in the year.

"I really appreciated the fact that they understood I had no meteorology classes under my belt and they were willing to ease me into the program instead of making me jump into the program running," he says.

How to Prepare

Be sure to take the right courses in high school.

"One of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to meteorology is that there is not a lot of math involved," Perales says. "I would recommend students take as much math as possible."

Mattias Falk took a PhD in biometeorology at the University of California. He recommends that high school students take math, physics, computer science and biology. A good general education is helpful, too. That's because students in scientific fields tend to benefit from interdisciplinary study.