With Direct to College admission, freshmen applicants have the possibility of being admitted directly to the College of Engineering as “Engineering Undeclared” (ENGRUD).

ENGRUD students engage in a robust first-year experience to explore 11 engineering major options before requesting placement in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Bioengineering, Bioresource Science and Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Human Centered Design and Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, or Mechanical Engineering. Applicants admitted to UW as ENGRUD are assured that they will have the ability to be placed into one of the engineering majors listed above.

Admission to DTC is only available in autumn quarter.

Transfer students do not follow the Direct to College admission pathway. Learn more about Transfer Admissions at the College of Engineering.

Being admitted as an Engineering Undeclared student means you will join the College of Engineering community immediately upon confirming your admission to the UW. Your first-year experience in the College will provide you with opportunities to explore your interests, build community, and develop your engineering skills.

Engineering Undeclared students can get involved with student communities, clubs and competition teams, participate in undergraduate research, and learn about study abroad opportunities starting in their first quarter.

Engineering Undeclared students should expect to take a math and science course each quarter during their first year. They will complete their schedules with general education requirements and optional seminars.

Generally, the process will be:

1. The UW part of the Common App opens each year on September 1 with a deadline of November 15 for admission for the following autumn quarter.
2. Select engineering undeclared or an engineering major (other than computer engineering or bioresource science and engineering) as your first-choice major to be considered for Direct to College admission.
3. The UW Office of Admissions will make decisions regarding direct-to-college admission via its holistic review process. Applicants will be notified of admission decisions to the UW and the College of Engineering in March.

For more detailed application instructions, see the UW Admissions page.

The Office of Admissions makes admissions decisions using a holistic review process that focuses on academic preparation, personal qualities, and characteristics. The Office of Admissions sends direct-to-college decisions with the UW admission decision.

Congratulations! The UW is a good fit for you if you are open to exploring and learning about the engineering major options available. Engineering is highly interdisciplinary and our graduates across our majors earn 14% more in starting salary than the national average. It is important that you are genuinely interested in exploring multiple engineering majors because we cannot guarantee placement into a specific major. An immersive first-year experience offers you many resources and opportunities to explore your interests and identify pathways for meeting your goals. The UW is not a good fit for you if you are highly focused on only one major and not open to additional major pathways.

Selecting any College of Engineering major as your first choice will assure that you are considered for Direct to College admission. If you’re open to pursuing a major outside of the College of Engineering at the UW, select a second-choice major on your application. Please note that you are not locked into any major at the UW, and may change your mind if admitted. Your second-choice major has no impact on whether you are admitted to your first-choice major. Review the UW’s list of available majors to identify a major that aligns with your interests.

We are unable to guarantee admission to the College of Engineering or to a specific engineering major at a later time. Therefore, we recommend considering alternate areas of study at the UW.

However, students can still apply to an engineering major through the capacity-constrained pathway once enrolled at the UW. Currently, the most capacity exists in chemical engineering, civil engineering, environmental engineering, industrial engineering, and materials science and engineering. If you want to apply to an engineering major once enrolled, we encourage you to connect with a departmental adviser during the autumn quarter.

The major placement process occurs at the end of your first academic year after you’ve had the chance to explore majors through the ENGR 101 class, and your Engineering First-year Interest Groups (E-FIGs) (E-FIG), relevant events and experiences, academic advising, participation in clubs and organizations, etc.

The College of Engineering publishes placement data each summer. The placement process is holistic, and many factors impact placement outcomes. The College’s commitment to prioritizing student choice is central to the placement process. Historically, the majority of students have placed in their first-choice major.

Yes! All students admitted directly to the College of Engineering will be given the status of Engineering Undeclared (ENGRUD) regardless of the engineering major selected on their application. You will not be required or expected to pursue the specific engineering major you indicated on the UW application, nor will your major of interest be used to evaluate you for Direct to College admission. If you select an engineering major (other than computer engineering or bioresource science and engineering) as your first-choice on your application, you will be considered for Direct to College admission.

As a student admitted via the Direct to College pathway, you will explore all of the engineering disciplines in your first year to make an informed decision about what you want to study when you request placement into a major at the end of your first year.

While there is only one placement cycle at the end of a student’s first year in the UW College of Engineering, students who have completed the application requirements and are on track to complete the enrollment requirements for their majors of interest may apply to engineering majors during their first year at UW via the capacity constrained application. This process is different from placement and thus there is no guarantee of admission to an engineering major via the capacity-constrained application pathway.

Learn how AP, IB, A-level, and Running Start are evaluated at UW. We have more detailed information about Running Start pathways here.

Applicants who select computer science or computer engineering as their first-choice major on their UW freshman application will be considered for Direct to Major admission to the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering rather than Direct to College admission to the College of Engineering.

Although computer engineering is an engineering degree, it is housed in the Allen School. Aligning admissions for the computer science and computer engineering majors provides greater transparency to applicants who intend to pursue either of these majors. Learn more about the Direct to Major admission process at the Allen School.

All of these majors offer capacity constrained admission processes that are open to all transfer students as well as current UW students who have satisfied application requirements.

The BSECE degree is highly adaptable to technological advances in popular research areas such as neural engineering, sustainable energy, quantum computing, data science, photonics and nanotechnology.

Students pursuing a BSECE degree through the ECE major will focus more heavily on the physical side of computing, including hardware, circuits, signal processing and the physics underlying computation, while students enrolled in computer engineering (CompE) and computer science (CS) degrees engage more deeply with the software, algorithms and data that drive various computing applications, as well as topics such as artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.

There is much overlap and interdisciplinary collaboration between those in ECE, CE, and CS, and there are many areas of specialization a student can pursue. However, ECE is focused mainly on the physical side of computing, while CS is focused more on software, algorithms, and data. CE tends to straddle the middle between the ECE and CS disciplines.

The University of Washington does not consider an applicant's second-choice major for admission into direct-entry majors or colleges. Applicants will only be considered for Direct to College or Direct to Major if a DTC or DTM major is their first-choice major.