Hi there - my son has a 3.9 GPA and strong story - we are local to the Seattle area. Discussing whether to choose Fosters/business as #major for UW - we have heard different points of view on this. Any guidance?
Also is the UW honors college a good option to consider?
He should apply to the major he wants, regardless of acceptance rates and all the other shenanigans. It’s harder to change schools within big schools like the University of Washington anyway. If he is on edge about it and really just wants to get in, then I’d suggest applying for the Arts and Sciences. But otherwise go for it.
Some extra context would be helpful if you want advice on chances and stuff (Standardized test scores, AP enrollment, etc.)
Does he want to major in business or something else?
If he wants to major in business, apply to business, which gives a (small) chance of frosh direct admission to the major. However, most business majors have to go through competitive secondary admission based on the process described at Standard Admission | Foster School of Business .
Many majors at University of Washington are capacity-limited, so he may want to see whether any majors of interest are not capacity-limited, based on the list at Majors | Office of Admissions .
Always go for where you want to be major wise. IN my opinion, you should put major above school, especially where transfer is far from assured.
If you want to study business or a discipline in business, you’d be better off at Oregon or Arizona, for example, than a UW in econ. Does he have a specific discipline of business that he has interest ?
Good luck
I’m wondering the same sort of thing. What does it take for a freshman direct admit to Fosters? I skimmed through a thread of admitted students and their stats and don’t think I saw ANY with admit to Fosters!
My daughter has UW 4.0 (4.7 W) with 12 APs and pretty good ECs. I feel like I’ve seen plenty of kids with similar stats as hers rejected from Foster.
She’s still deciding between engineering and business and it looks like engineering has better admit rates. I’ll encourage her to apply to wherever she wants to be and don’t think I could endorse attending without direct admit to that college. Just curious what the odds are - seems like a long shot for anyone to major in business there.
Another thing to consider.
Engineering has some of the highest major change of non completion rates. It’s hard.
It’s often easier to change out if engineerimg than into. Many end up in business - of those that leave.
So in theory better to start in engineering - but in reality if you want business better to start there.
I bring this up though because if a student does choose engineering, you might choose a school where business is easily transferable into or the student could end up 0 for if they decide engineering isn’t for them.
This makes sense for sure! And the potential to change majors is a reason I’ve encouraged a bigger school with lots of programs. We’ll see how her interests and everything pan out over the next year!
Don’t know if it is typical, but my child (WA resident) with a 4.0 unweighted GPA, 15 AP classes, varsity athlete with strong extracurriculars did not receive direct admission to Foster OR the Honors College — even though she did receive admission to every other Honors College and direct admission program she applied to elsewhere (and received Regents scholarships at two UC schools in California).
However, at the time, UW did not accept the Common App so perhaps the Coalition App was the problem. I do believe that UW also gives significant weight to the socioeconomic status of the student’s neighborhood (at least they were part of a pilot project for that) and that may have been a factor.
In addition, my child did not have extracurricular activities that skewed heavily toward business because that was a late-emerging interest.
Finally, I note that for current students applying to a major, UW uses algorithms to screen applicants. I don’t know if it is the same for incoming freshmen, but a UW student created a site to help students figure out how they stand relative to admission to the major: https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/uw-student-spills-secrets-to-getting-into-most-desirable-majors/
If that had existed when my child applied, perhaps she could have better tailored her application to increase odds of admission.