I’m a rising junior and I’m hoping to apply to UW’s Direct to CS program during senior year. Currently, I’m working on getting some CS related ECs and classes at my school, and I was wondering how hard it is for people to be admitted to direct to CS? (On a scale of 1 to 5).
Extremely hard. It’s even harder if you don’t get Direct to CS and attend UW thinking that you will gain admission through the school’s competitive process. There are only a limited number of admission slots and about 5X that number wanting to get in. No disrespect to UW, but if you don’t get Direct to CS, you should strongly consider going to another university if you’re dead set on getting a CS degree. I hear that UW’s CS advisors are telling applicants that very thing.
For the record, UW is not the only school where CS and engineering are highly competitive. When thinking about which colleges to apply to, make it part of your research to find out the specific admission rates for CS. It can be 3-4x as competitive as the university at large in some cases.
If you are intent on a CS major, you should take the competitive nature into account in your application strategy. You best result would be to be accepted into the CS major at your target schools. Changing majors into CS is increasingly difficult.
It is easier now to get direct CS than it has been in years passed. They’ve changed their model now to accept a lot more direct CS, with fewer slots for people applying from within UW itself. What this means is that if you don’t get direct admittance to CS, you should either look somewhere else for your education, or transfer into the CS program from a WA community college.
For Fall 2019 admissions, you probably look at 5% admission rate.