The University of Washington Tacoma considers each applicant as they apply based upon their own merits, course work and documents. The admission process is both competitive and holistic, giving each applicant an opportunity for a comprehensive and individual review. Applicants who apply early have the best chance for full university and program consideration.

Graduate admission is managed by individual academic programs and processed through the UW Graduate School. Requirements vary by academic program, but all applicants must hold an undergraduate degree with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 from a regionally accredited college or university in the U.S. or its equivalent from a foreign institution for the last 90 graded quarter credits or 60 graded semester credits from a baccalaureate degree (for a Master's, doctoral, or professional degree, the total cumulative average may be used). Proficiency in English is required for graduate study at the University of Washington. Therefore event applicant whose native language is not English must demonstrate English Language Proficiency Requirements. Some graduate programs may require additional admission requirements, including a higher grade-point-average. Inquire with the academic program for further information.

Applicants must simultaneously be admitted to the UW Graduate School and an academic program at UW Tacoma. For detailed graduate admissions information, see the individual graduate school sections.

For most aid programs, financial need is defined as the difference between what it costs to attend school and what the student can afford to pay. The amount a student should be able to pay is determined by a standard, federally mandated need-analysis method. The method establishes whether a student is considered dependent or independent for financial aid purposes. Student who are considered dependent for financial aid purposes must provide parent information when applying for financial aid.

There is no income standard or other simple method of determining whether a student will qualify for need-based financial aid. Any student who thinks they need help should apply.

To qualify for federal financial aid, a student must:

• Be a U.S. citizen, permanent resident or other eligible non-citizen
• Be admitted to the university in an approved program and meet minimum enrollment requirements (most distance learning, correspondence, and non-matriculated students do not qualify for financial aid)
• Not be in default on a previous student loan or owe a repayment on a grant or loan for which the student was not eligible
• Maintain satisfactory academic progress based on federal, state, and institutional requirements.
• Provide financial information (including parents’ information, where required)

Eligible students are considered for funding based on three things: need, class level, and state residency status. Need determines priority for those programs within the class level. Students with the fewest resources are given first priority for all aid funds.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is the basic application for most types of financial aid.

Students must complete and submit their FAFSA information directly to the federal processor online. Students must apply for a Federal Student Aid (FSA) ID in order to complete the online FAFSA. An FSA ID can be obtained by registering through fsaid.ed.gov. To access FAFSA on the Web, go to https://studentaid.gov/h/apply-for-aid/fafsa.

A student who wishes to apply for financial aid to support study during the summer quarter must submit a separate summer application (in addition to the FAFSA or WASFA) in their MyUW accounts (available April 1 for the upcoming summer quarter).

*Students who are not eligible to complete the FAFSA due to their immigration status may still be eligible to apply for state and institutional aid by completing the Washington Application for State Financial Aid (WASFA).

For first priority consideration for most aid programs, the FAFSA must be received by the federal application processor by the university's annual priority application date. Students who submit their FAFSAs after the priority date, fifth-year students, and part-time students may be eligible to borrow funds through the Federal Stafford Loan or the Federal PLUS Loan Programs. Undergraduates may qualify for a Federal Pell Grant.

For students eligible to file a WASFA, that application must also be received by the processor by the university's annual priority application date.

Students who apply for financial aid should remember to keep copies of financial documents used in completing the FAFSA or WASFA, continuously monitor their UW email account for official correspondence from the Office of Student Financial Aid, and notify the Office of the Registrar of any change in address.

UW Tacoma students will occasionally need to enroll at a community college to complete admission deficiencies. The credits at the community college may be counted toward the student’s total quarter enrollment credits using a financial aid consortium agreement. Both UW Tacoma and the community college must approve consortium agreements. If approved, consortium agreements enable the student to receive financial aid based on the total credits being taken at both institutions. Agreements must be submitted to the Office of Student Financial Aid no later than three weeks prior to the start of the quarter. Students may also qualify to receive aid if enrolled in the UWT-TCC Dual Enrollment program.

Consideration for need-based scholarships is given based on information received on the FAFSA or WASFA. Scholarship lists are available through the Office of Student Financial Aid and at websites listed later in this section.

UW Tacoma offers several scholarships available to fund study only at UW Tacoma. For information regarding scholarship opportunities, visit our Financial Aid website.

Student Fiscal Services monitors student tax information at the University of Washington. This information includes data for use in claiming educational tax credits and deductions that you have paid for tuition and fees. In addition, the UW provides information to help you determine if your scholarships, fellowships, grants, or tuition reductions are taxable. The UW cannot provide individual tax advice. If you have questions, you should consult your tax advisor about your specific circumstances.

Scholarships, fellowships, grants, and tuition reductions are not considered taxable income if they are used solely for qualified educational expenses. Any amount used for personal or non-qualified expenses is subject to tax. For more details, refer to the IRS Publication 970: Tax Benefits for Education.

Go to f2.washington.edu/fm/sfs/tax to find links to the following topics:

• Education tax credits and tax deductions (IRS Form 1098T)
• Print your 1098T information
• Nonresident alien student tax (IRS Form 1042S)
• Employees’ tuition exemption tax withholding
• Canadian tax information

For questions, please email taxquest@uw.edu or call 206-221-2609 for assistance.

Washington College Grant

The nationally recognized Washington College Grant (formerly the State Need Grant) makes education and training beyond high school affordable. Amounts vary based on income, family size, and the school or program attended. Recipients must meet program requirements and attend an approved institution or program. Eligibility tables and award amounts are available at the Washington State Achievement Council (WSAC) website.

There is no separate application for the Washington College Grant. Students should complete a state or federal financial aid application, which colleges will use to determine eligibility and make awards.

Washington State's Guaranteed Education Tuition

Washington State's Guaranteed Education Tuition (GET) program is a 529 college savings program named for the section of the IRS code that defines these types of plans. This program allows individuals to prepay for students’ college educational expenses. Funds from the GET program are used to reduce qualified educational expenses. The amounts used to pay these expenses are not taxable or reported to the IRS on the 1098T forms that the UW provides students for filing their tax returns.

Core Learning Community

The Core Learning Community introduces first-year students to the excitement and challenges of post-secondary education through a series of theme-based courses organized around the Core "Areas of Inquiry."

Throughout their Core experience, students will work collaboratively with their peers and UW Tacoma faculty while gaining familiarity with the skills required to succeed across the curriculum. In pursuit of this goal, all Core courses are designed to cultivate and refine our campus-wide learning goals, which include communication and self-expression; civic engagement; critical inquiry; global understanding; cultural competence; and problem solving.

Summer Bridge Program

Summer Bridge provides incoming freshmen with tools for success as they navigate a new academic environment and face the personal and intellectual challenges of being a first-year student.

Undergraduate Student Showcase

Each quarter, OUE sponsors a student showcases that provides undergraduate students an opportunity to present their quarterly projects to the UW Tacoma campus community. It also provides an open forum for students to discuss their work and connect with faculty and peers from across the curriculum.

Testing

The Office of Undergraduate Education provides Math placement, Spanish Proficiency testing and makeup tests for individual students upon faculty requests.

Undergraduate Education Academic Council

The Undergraduate Education Academic Council (UEAC) oversees curriculum issues pertaining to undergraduate education and plays an important role in elevating the profile and quality of the undergraduate academic experience at UW Tacoma.

Learning Community

Core courses are designed to prepare first-year students for success both in college and beyond. The challenges we face today are complex, and they require educated citizens capable of understanding issues from multiple perspectives. Consequently, many Core courses adopt an interdisciplinary approach to their particular field of study.

In their first year, Core students meet many of their general education graduation requirements in classes with a student-to-faculty ratio of 25 to 1. Discussion, lectures, reading, writing, and project assignments are designed to broaden students' perspectives--not only about what they are studying, but also about how what they are learning resonates within the world in which they live.

Having sampled the scope of UW Tacoma's curricular offerings through their Core experience, first-year students are better prepared to select courses each quarter from a range of electives that will allow them to explore and prepare for potential majors.

While the faculty that teach Core curriculum courses come from a variety of academic programs on campus, they teach to a common set of student learning objectives with a developmental approach that emphasizes the foundational skills necessary to succeed in college courses. Faculty collaborate in the Core Learning Community to design and teach classes that build on these objectives while introducing students to academic writing, the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities.

As the foundation of a student’s academic career at UW Tacoma, Core strives to foster the following learning objectives:

Sample Course Descriptions

Below are sample course descriptions. Core courses change based on the faculty teaching each quarter. For information on Core courses currently being offered, check the online Time Schedule.

T CORE 101 Introduction to Academic Writing (C)

Service Learning for Social Justice.

Students will explore the theme of social justice through service learning. Along with writing on particular topics related to this theme, they will do research about the issue of volunteerism and civic responsibility in conjunction with the particular project they pick, such as working with Habitat for Humanity. The goal of the class is to put academics into action, so that students will understand that what they learn can be applied in the real world.

T CORE 102 Introduction to Science (NW)

Where the Water Meets the Road: Examining the Environmental Impacts of Urbanization on Aquatic Ecosystems.

How do your actions impact the aquatic organisms living in Puget Sound? As the human population continues to climb, more and more people are migrating to urban areas. This in turn imposes greater stresses on adjacent water bodies and other natural resources. This class seeks to explore the growing urban centers around the world and their associated environmental impacts on neighboring aquatic ecosystems. We will also address practices that promote sustainable living in urban areas.

T CORE 103 Introduction to Social Sciences (l&S)

'I'm Batman': Intersections of Pop Culture and Identity.

As consumers of popular culture, most of us are guilty of defending our favorite TV shows long after they've been cancelled, arguing about the likability of a hero in a film, or even debating the merit of trash TV. In an era where you can take Buzzfeed quizzes to determine which superhero or cartoon character you most resemble, it is important to question why our relationship with such cultural texts matters. This course will interrogate the relationship between popular culture, representations of identity, and its consumers. We will examine texts ranging from commercials to award-winning television shows in order to question how and why these texts create meaning for viewers. By writing about texts that we may not easily consider "academic," we will practice skills of interpretation and reflection in order to ask "Why do these texts matter to us?"

T CORE 104 Introduction to Humanities (VLPA)

Listening Outside the Box: Concert Music in the 21st Century.

With only ten weeks to explore the world of "classical music", we will immerse ourselves in a multitude of listening experiences, to include live concert attendance and in-class performances by local musicians. Building on this foundation, we will explore the impact of today's global society on this musical tradition: to what extent have new technologies, increased communication and the ensuing democratization of music impacted the ways in which we relate to "concert music"? Does this music still have relevance in our lives? How have other cultures embraced this tradition, and how has the music of other cultures influenced composition and performance in this genre?

The University of Washington Tacoma reserves the right to drop students who have not attended class during the first week of the quarter to make space for other students waiting to enroll. However, a student should not assume that they will be automatically dropped from a course if they do not attend. It is the student's responsibility to drop the course through MyUW. Students who are registered for a course section but do not attend will be assigned a failing grade by the instructor.

Restrictions on Attending Classes

No person, other than a faculty member attending informally with the approval of the instructor, may attend a UW Tacoma course in which that person has not been registered. An instructor may allow a student to attend their class only if the student's name is on the official class list from the Office of the Registrar. An unregistered student may attend through the fourteenth calendar day of the quarter.

Auditing a Course

Attendance in courses as an auditor is by consent of the instructor and only as space permits. Permission to audit is ordinarily granted for lecture classes only. Students who intend to audit a course must first register for the class through MyUW, then seek permission from the instructor and complete a Registration Transaction Request form to elect to use the audit grade option. The form including the approval is submitted to the Office of the Registrar. The deadline to change to audit status is listed on the Academic Calendar each quarter on the registration website. A $20 fee may be imposed depending on the timing of the transaction. Standard tuition and fees apply.

Auditors may not participate in discussion or laboratory work and the auditor’s registration may be canceled at the discretion of the instructor. No record of audited courses is kept.  To receive credit for an audited course, the student must register for the class for credit and complete the course requirements in a subsequent quarter.

To be classified as a full-time student by UW Tacoma, an undergraduate student must register for and complete at least 12 credits per quarter. A graduate student must register for and complete at least 10 credits per quarter.

To be classified as a half-time student by the University, an undergraduate must register for and complete at least six credits per quarter. A graduate student must register for and complete five credits per quarter.

Please note that financial aid and tuition rates do not necessarily correspond to the above credit requirements.

A student’s initial class standing is determined by the total number of transfer credits awarded by UW Tacoma, not by the number of years of college study or completion of an associate degree. The following table lists the required credits for each class.

Students should note that satisfying UW Tacoma graduation requirements depends not only on the number of credits completed (a minimum of 180) but also on completion of all program requirements.

Undergraduate students who have completed a quarter at UW Tacoma, may take the following quarter off and remain eligible to register during Registration Period I for the subsequent quarter without re-enrolling as a returning student. Any quarter from which a student has completely withdrawn does not constitute a completed quarter. Summer quarter enrollment is not required to maintain continuous registration eligibility. The quarter-off policy is not available for graduate students; graduate students must apply for On-Leave Status.

Freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, and post-baccalaureate students enrolled at UW Tacoma may register for courses at another UW campus (Seattle or Bothell) beginning in Period 2 registration via MyUW.

All students may cross-register during the summer quarter and they may register during Period 1 registration. Freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors and post-baccalaureates must complete the required number of home-campus credits first.

Visit the Office of the Registrar website for details on cross-campus registration.

Eligibility

• A maximum of 15 credits per academic year (autumn through summer quarter) may be taken on a campus other than the home campus.
• A maximum of 45 credits taken through cross-campus registration may be counted toward the degree.

Policy reference for information in this section may be found in the UW Policy Directory in the following sections: Student Governance and Policies.

With the approval of the academic department offering the course, a student may repeat a course once with both the original grade and the second grade computed in the grade point average. However, credit will be allowed only once.

A second repeat (taking a class for a third- or greater-time) cannot be done using MyUW. Grades in the third or subsequent takings will not be included in the grade-point average (GPA).

Veterans receiving benefits must receive approval from the veteran coordinator in the Veteran and Military Resource Center before a course is repeated.

To protect the student's investment of educational effort and the value of the degree, UW Tacoma will not award credit for classes that repeat work done elsewhere. It is the responsibility of students who have earned credit at other colleges to determine whether courses they plan to take at UW Tacoma would duplicate any previously earned credit. Duplicate credit will not be awarded for a course that is equivalent to courses previously passed. Students who are in doubt should consult with an academic advisor before registering.

Withdrawal for Military Service

Students who are called to active military duty may withdraw through the end of the seventh week of instruction and receive a full refund but no academic credit. A copy of the student’s military orders is required. If a student withdraws after that date, the student may receive either a full refund or academic credit and no refund. Students who withdraw for military reasons will be allowed to return to the university without having to pay another application fee. Documentation in the form of military orders will be required. Please consult with the Office of the Registrar for complete details.

Complete Withdrawal for a Registered Quarter

Dropping all courses for the quarter

It is the student’s responsibility to withdraw from all courses if they are unable to attend. Students may withdraw on MyUW through the Unrestricted Drop Period. Official withdrawals must be submitted through the Advisor-Assisted Current Drop process prior to the final day of instruction.

Tuition owed will be based on the date the complete withdrawal is received. Withdrawals are not accepted after the last day of instruction for the quarter.

The tuition forfeiture schedule for complete withdrawal from the university is as follows:

• Students who withdraw on or before the seventh calendar day of the quarter do not pay tuition.
• Students who withdraw after the seventh calendar day through the 30th calendar day continue to owe one-half of their tuition.
• Students who withdraw after the 30th calendar day continue to owe full tuition.

The following principles apply to complete withdrawal from the university:

• Courses dropped as part of a complete withdrawal from the university during the first two weeks of a quarter are not recorded on the student’s UW transcript; however, the date of the complete withdrawal is recorded.
• A recipient of veteran benefits should immediately notify the Veteran and Military Services Resource Center of withdrawal.
• A student with a scholarship or loan awarded through the university should notify the Office of Student Financial Aid of withdrawal.

Former Quarter Drop

Students may petition to drop courses for a former quarter using the Former Quarter Drop process. The Registrar will grant such a petition if, in their judgement, the student was unable to complete the course in question. Approved drops will be annotated on the student’s transcript as an RD (Registrar Drop).