UW has three different categories of direct admit freshman majors:
Pre-majors which are mostly the non-competitive majors that you can get listed in directly as freshman. There are a bunch of them like Anthropology, Fisheries Science, Art History, etc. These are departments that tend not to be capacity-constrained and so don’t have rigid competitive admissions processes into their majors.
Direct to Major: These are the competitive majors that allow direct admissions for freshman. There are a limited number of them. They are: Architecture, Biochemistry, Business Administration, Chemistry, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Music, Construction Management, Infomatics, and Neuroscience.
Direct to College: These are students who get admitted directly into the College of Engineering but without a specific major. All the applicants to the College of Engineering fall into this category except for Computer Engineering which is direct admit. The other 10 engineering majors are all competitive admissions after you are accepted into the College of Engineering. Engineering is the only college that does competitive direct-admit to the college but not the major.
It is all explained here where you can find every UW major and determine what sort of admissions criteria exist:
I think about this often. If they reject an overqualified student for yield protection, it’s unfair to me that they would take their application fee yet not offer a spot. It’s more like a lottery than an application based on merit for some students.
I’m not sure if my daughter got an actual email. She found out via the UW portal. They create a UW email account for you and send stuff there. We already paid the acceptance fee and confirmed admission.
I think she was expecting something formal in the actual snail mail but we haven’t gotten anything yet. Meanwhile all the other schools she applied to are sending us stuff like mad. Especially Gonzaga which seems to send something every day.
My daughter received an email from UW on 3/12 saying that decisions were updated and then on 3/16 an email from the business school (it was in her promotions tab on gmail).
It’s competitive. Those who got into ME had very high GPAs in their Pre-req courses, impressive resumes and strong short answer response. Details on the placement process can be found here: Placement into a major | UW College of Engineering. Ideally, your son will find he’s also interested in other engineering majors and would be happy with them if he got his 2nd or 3rd choice. Outside of engineering, Physics and Informatics are popular majors for those who don’t get into ME.
Hi anyone waitlisted? Do you how the process works? Looked at last year’s thread & several people got admitted in May itself. Is there a thread for 2025 waitlisted? Thanks!
I don’t think it was age-related because I was accepted into engineering and I’m also 16 (graduating one year early). However, I think your daughter has a great chance of being accepted off the waitlist because she has a great profile! Wishing you and your daughter the best!
