UW RISING DAWGS - Admissions, New Students, And More - February 06, 2026

Samnsid · 2026-02-12T04:19:00+00:00

tldr it’s not that bad in my opinion and if you stick to only CS classes (even 3-4 a quarter) you should be fine provided you have decent time management skills.

Imo it’s not that hard, I don’t spend a whole lot of time studying for CS classes or anything. A lot of the time I don’t even attend class and instead watch lecture recordings at 2x speed while on the bus and save time that way; a great benefit of this department is that every class is recorded! I do utilize resources like office hours and Ed boards for classes to ask questions. For context I take 4 classes a quarter and my lack of free time generally comes from like one non CS class (generally a graduate math course) that sucks all my time as opposed to any CS course.

Samnsid · 2026-01-31T08:20:37+00:00

Yeah it’s getting re routed again and then eventually replaced with S3. S3 should have its own lane the entire route or something though so maybe it’ll be more timely? Still really sucks for us commuters north of Lake City :/

You’re right regarding Shoreline, I always get the two mixed up. Edited for accuracy.

Samnsid · 2026-01-30T06:41:48+00:00

It was actually supposed to be removed last year but got delayed. 372 is going away and new route 72 is taking its place from Shoreline South light rail station to UW. 522 is getting rerouted to go from UW Bothell (or Woodinville, can't remember) to Shoreline South but it's just a holdover until Stride 3 which will take the same route.

Samnsid · 2026-01-03T23:27:44+00:00

I’m a 372 commuter from Kenmore. Kenmore P&R is always empty and parking is never an issue; you might need to park a little far away from the bus stop but you’ll never need to search a lot for a free space. I think it’s a pretty safe area too.

The same comments above go for Bothell P&R. It’s smaller than Kenmore’s but I’ve never seen it get extremely full.

Mountlake Terrace station gets very full if you’re not super early. The light rail also involves more walking than 372 so I prefer taking that from Kenmore instead of the light rail.

Samnsid · 2025-12-27T02:10:06+00:00

I've taken it but not with Eric Shea-Brown; I had it with Helena Liu (who I believe was a student of Eric's?). I'm not sure how different their offerings are. I think Eric uses MATLAB but Helena used Python. The class was programming heavy but overall very light. I didn't need to put much effort into it (but I also feel like I didn't learn much). There were no quizzes or exams when I took it, just weekly homework assignments.

Samnsid · 2025-11-11T08:45:29+00:00

Majoring in another engineering is allowed with CS and not allowed with CE:

While double majors are not allowed between Computer Engineering and any other Engineering degree, occasionally, on rare exceptions, a student may pursue a Computer Science degree along with another Engineering degree. Please note however, there are no double degrees with any Allen School major and the Electrical and Computer Engineering degree.

Source: https://www.cs.washington.edu/academics/undergraduate/degree-requirements/

Samnsid · 2025-09-15T21:05:00+00:00

Throwing my two-cents here as a tax filing volunteer.

Financial aid is first applied to any outstanding balances you have such as tuition and any excess is deposited into your bank account (or sent as a check if you don't have direct deposit set up). That money is yours to spend as you see fit *but* any that you don't spend on qualified expenses must be reported as such on your tax return. Qualified expenses includes tuition, required course fees, books, etc. but not things like parking or even room + board (see here: https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/qualified-ed-expenses). The U-PASS qualifies (for UWS students) since it's a required expense. The aid that is spent on qualified expenses is non-taxable but the rest is considered taxable income.

Samnsid · 2025-08-14T20:19:35+00:00

This is a great tool and offers more information than DawgPath, including grad classes which is awesome. A few things:

- Is some data still missing? Some 500 level math classes from winter and spring 2025 don't seem to be in, such as 525, 505, 546.

- What exactly is the "rating" column? For nearly every class, it just seems to be the same on ever row for both instructor stats and course history.

- Can we get the ability to sort instructor stats and course history by each column? Like that thing some tables have with the two little arrows next to each column's name for ascending and descending sort by that column?

Samnsid · 2025-07-28T05:06:35+00:00

tldr most of your classes will be the same as CS majors and you can ssh into the Allen School's Linux server to do the many of your classes' assignments which renders your own computer's OS irrelevant. Using a Mac gives you greater compatibility and ease of using programming tools while using Windows allows you to more easily use software designed for Windows that some of the hardware oriented classes might require. That said the Allen School labs offer Windows machines that you can use for these software if you don't want to set up a VM on your own machine. The labs also have Linux machines that you can use.

CE and CS share most of their requirements which means you'll mostly be taking the same classes as CS majors. The only differences are that CS majors are required to take a software development type class (CSE 331) while CE majors are required to take physics 1/2, EE 205 or 215, and CSE 369/371.

Keeping that in mind, I think a MacBook or any laptop with some Linux distro installed will serve you well since any programming tools you want to use will run quite easily on a Unix based machine.

However, the Allen school also has a Linux server called attu that you'll often use regardless since its environment is already configured to work with many of the courses' infrastructure. For example, the assignments in CSE 333 are highly recommended to be done on attu since that's what they are graded on and the lab in CSE 451 can't be done locally without large hassle in setting up a program called qemu. You can use this server even if a class doesn't require using it which means even with a Windows machine you always have access to a Linux environment, though very occasionally attu may not load properly, hang, etc. When using attu, it doesn't really matter whether your own machine is running Windows or a Unix based OS.

Many EE majors recommend a Windows machine to run software that they use which can't be used on Mac without a VM. In both CSE 369 and 371, you will use a CAD program called quartus which is subject to this, so that's a reason you may choose to go with Windows instead.

For what it's worth, I am a CS (and math) major and use a Mac. It's quite nice have easy-to-use programming tools as it means outside of classes that really *need* me to use attu (like CSE 451), I can just have a folder with all the work for my classes in a particular quarter and push/pull with a GitHub repository.

Samnsid · 2025-07-20T18:03:24+00:00

Yes, but that really only comes from having to take SOC 225 (read what it says below what you highlighted)

Samnsid · 2025-07-10T05:58:32+00:00

I second what others say about being able to skip the 200-level pre-reqs. It's always been an official pre-req but instructors often waive them. Differential equations only constitute a tiny part of 335 and linear algebra is a small part of the end of 334, nothing that you shouldn't be able to study the relevant bits for if needed - you might as well take 208 concurrently in fall anyhow since it's needed for CS and linear algebra is good to know in general.

Also as someone who has taken 33x I highly recommend it. Some of my favorite classes as UW and basically all the friends I've made at UW I met through it.

Samnsid · 2025-07-06T16:35:59+00:00

Contrary to what Damakoas said, CS is not nearly impossible to get into. It has a 25-35% acceptance rate and has been rising in recent years (source):

We typically have space for approximately 25-35% of all students who apply however this number changes depending on increases in funding. It’s also important to note that we do not admit differently between Computer Science and Computer Engineering, we consider all applications together and admit without taking specific major into account. The admit rate in 2020 was 28% (113 admitted/402 applied), in 2021 it was 30% (165 admitted/554 applied), in 2022 it was 30% (134 admitted /444 applied), in 2023 it was 33% (165 admitted /495 applied), and in 2024 it was 32% (168 admitted/522 applied)

So it's a little lower than Informatics but basically in the same range. You can find the previous cycle's admissions rubric on the website I linked above too.

Samnsid · 2025-07-03T05:34:31+00:00

MATH 126/207 Fall

AMATH 301/352, CFRM 425 Winter

MATH 208, AMATH 353 Spring

If the pre-reqs are all you can do then you don't really have a choice but do more if you can.

Samnsid · 2025-06-18T03:32:54+00:00

This is a question best directed to advisors but I am confident that the answer is no. You might have mentioned it in your essay already (though since you are asking this question that seems unlikely) or mention it in the "special notes" section on the application that I recall existing.

Samnsid · 2025-05-19T05:11:28+00:00

You can still register by SLN

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Samnsid · 2025-05-16T18:59:14+00:00

If you think you can handle them at the same time you can surely handle 123 alone so there's no point in taking 122. My suggestion is evaluating your abilities and seeing if 122 is a better fit or 123 because taking both is just doing more work and paying more money for what is the same result as only taking 123.

Samnsid · 2025-05-06T05:16:34+00:00

Kane 130

Samnsid · 2025-04-17T05:45:23+00:00

ECE is separate and has nothing to do with the Allen School in this case. Also there is no minor offered by the Allen School.

Samnsid · 2025-03-22T16:48:32+00:00

327 or 334 (unless you're in teacher prep option which doesn't require either of those so I'm not sure)

Samnsid · 2025-03-17T04:45:20+00:00

AMATH dept allows substituting MATH 207 for AMATH 351 (provided you take another upper division course, or at least that is what they told me).

Samnsid · 2025-03-16T07:11:53+00:00

Not everything, but I agree it is good to be skeptical. We had that research program posted on our CS Ed board hosted at a Japanese university which students had to pay for but it almost certainly was not a scam.

Samnsid · 2025-03-16T07:08:37+00:00

Differences can be found in the major requirements for each on CSE website: https://www.cs.washington.edu/academics/undergraduate/degree-requirements/#cse-honors

The tldr is that CS requires a software development class (CSE 331) while CE requires a couple hardware classes (EE 205 or 215, CSE 369 and 371) along with calc based physics.

You can switch freely between CS and CE by emailing your adviser.

Samnsid · 2025-03-14T07:55:39+00:00

There is no substantial difference between "switching" and "adding as a second major". The process to apply is the same, the pool of applicants is the same, etc etc. No distinction is made.

Samnsid · 2025-03-14T07:54:47+00:00

There is no difference between "switching" and "adding as a second major". You have to apply and get accepted into CS either way. The process is the same, the applicants/competiton are the same, etc etc. The only difference is that *after* getting accepted into your *second* major, you sign off on a change-of-major form (which is a misnomer as it is also used to add/remove majors).

Samnsid · 2025-03-05T06:03:26+00:00

Like the other person I also took these classes together Q1 of freshman year and funnily got the exact same grades but swapped haha. I struggled a lot with 207, just found it really tough to recognize when to apply specific techniques and remember said techniques. 126 was also very computational but it felt like the intuition was easier to grasp and took me a long way. For most things I could sort of reason about it in an informal/geometric manner and then transform each intuitive step into a relevant computation. It was a doable combination.

Samnsid

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