we only got the unsubsidized loan. Can my son still apply for work study?
I donāt know much about how they decide between offering subsidized, unsubsidized or work study. Some schools donāt differentiate between workstudy or non-workstudy applicants, so certainly he could get a campus job. But I believe a work study offer has to be accepted by July to apply for Fall jobs. You could always appeal and request it. Between my two kids, I have appealed a couple offers at different schools; one said no thatās all, and one gave me another $5k loan.
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Minimum wage in Seattle is (a crazy) $21 / hour. Any tipped job pays $30+ / hour. U village is walking distance. Pretty easy to make $1,000+ / month with light part-time work. Kids gotta work these days! 
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Rejected DTM Comp Sci, In-state, white M17, tri-lingual, 3.98UW GPA (two A- unrelated to STEM field). SAT 1500 (750+750). 14 AP = 7 finished AP distinguished scholar in 2024 (39 credits) + another 7 AP class exams this May 2025 (+35 college credits). Robotics club, cross-country and track team for 3 years. NHS countless hours of volunteering. Shy personality - no Club President roles. Essay about how community helped him to conquer his personal struggle, how heās ready to help others to overcome their own personal difficulties. US citizen (UW had troubles confirming it though for FAFSA). Top 2 in his Comp Class at school, IT internship paid work, IT certificate. Making CS his top priority in 4 years, cybersecurity club. Getting rejected from ALL Top CS schools he applied to.
Though waitlisted at UCSD Comp Sci and waitlisted at Carnegie M Comp Sci. Got pre-science-admitted to UW admission, which makes him ineligible for appeal (canāt appeal DTM to Comp Sci). Got CS admission to WSU, which was not his Top-10 choice.
Firmly believes that this life is unfair and ruined at this point, with all these hours of rigorous studies and all A and AP being complete waste of time. His peers with less impressive stats got direct-admitted to UW Comp Eng. Heās been navigating medical condition (depression) for the last 2 years. He does not understand what he couldāve done better.. But he does not regret his decision of rejecting his parentās to get āassistantās helpā with preparing his essay. Because, in his opinion, hiring another person to help him work on the essay wouldāve been dishonest.
Rejected: UW CS, UIUC CS, UCLA CS, UC Berkeley. Not wait-listed.
Best of luck for those admitted. Hoping that all those admitted have the same level of integrity, honesty and commitment to CS as my son has.
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Be a Coug! Have a blast in Pullman. Kick arse in school. Never look back. Get an amazing job and hire Huskies to work for you one day.
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Has anyone on the wait list been offered admission yet? I realize itās way too early but figured Iād ask everyone to post if and when that happens. Reasonably Iād imagine no wait list admissions til May at the earliest.
His background is terrific and I am surprised by his results. Obviously, he likely would have gotten into UW in any other major. My only guess, and this is just a guess, is that while a 750 is a terrific math score, it could be low for applicants to top CS programs.
4 years ago my son had very similar stats and was rejected from all but his safety schools (engineering instead of CS, but similarly competitive). It turns out we didnāt understand how competitive it would be and misjudged what we thought were match schools. Itās heartbreaking when this happens. We asked ourselves many times āwhat more could he have possibly doneā? The answer is reallyā¦ nothing. The problem isnāt your kid, itās that there are way more kids vying for spots at these schools than there are spots for all of them. It essentially becomes a lottery. It is not a reflection on your son or his abilities. At all.
You have options, though:
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As someone else said, he can go to WSU. CS programs at every school in this area are growing and getting awesome because theyāre getting so many great students like your son. One of my sonās friends went there intending to transfer after a year and ended up loving it.
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There are other schools still taking applications that are getting good reputations in CS for these overflow kids. UW Bothell is an example. Maybe ASU? We contacted a college counselor for a 1 hour consultation and she had suggestions for schools that were still an option even at a late date).
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He could take a gap year and try again next year. You might also look into Cal Poly SLO, Cal Poly Pomona, UC Davis, Seattle University, Oregon State University, University of Colorado Boulder - search explicitly for ones with higher acceptance rates in CS.
The only thing that really matters, though, are these words of wisdom from my 17-year-old son when I was stressing out 4 years ago. It doesnāt matter where you go. What matters is what you do while youāre there. Your son sounds like a very impressive kid. Hang in there, and have faith that your son can navigate this and can make a great path for himself even if itās not the one he originally envisioned.
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This is truly heartbreaking. I can only empathize with you and your kid.
I know how it feels when a dream that youāve been nurturing for years shatters in a heartbeat.
Iām not even going to tell you all the other options you have to consider; Iām sure your kid is smart enough to figure out their next steps.
Where did he go wrong? Well no where really, except believing that admissions are āobjectiveā, and trusting that meritocracy is the primary criteria.
My own kid is rejected by UW Seattle; while, it wasnāt her ādreamā school, she really wanted it for proximity. Sheās still in shock that she got accepted to every school including her very high reach like Michigan, but not her own state flagship.
Somethings donāt make sense, or may be they do, I donāt know.
It seems pretty clear that many of these admission departments are well-overdue for some adult supervision. Especially as it relates to in-state decisions. Hope they get it soon!
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Does anyone know if UW will negotiate the amount offered for Purple & Gold OOS scholarships? (and what the range is?)
Curious, what would your negotiating position be? Not saying they wouldnāt, but the school seems to have all of the power and literally a line of people waiting to get in. Is your position that you wonāt attend unless the amount is increased?
I donāt think thereās a lot of understanding of the sheer scale of applications UW receives to CS DTM and Foster and the impact of the in-state diversity cohort programs. Itās a bit like an Ivy with published admit stats but when you put in the hooked admission numbers those admit numbers go way down in reality for most applicants. This is no commentary on the policies of UW, I actually quite agree with them, this is just numbers.
Both CS and Foster have low-income first-gen in-state cohort official programs. So maybe there are 300 in-state available spots per class - but when you take out those 75-100 diversity cohorts - that number comes down significantly and not that far off the out of state admit spaces.
CS and Foster are also by far the most popular requested majors to UW - CS far above Foster but combined they are nearly 1/3 of all apps to UW. Also very popular but much lower are Bio and Psych. Impossible from UW available data to know exact admit rates - but if you assume the 25% admit in-state CS number UW publishes is correct, taking out the cohort admits - itās probably closer to 10% or lower in-state.
UW also appears to be getting rid of a feeder high school concept so the closer you are to UW in mileage the more competitive it actually might be making those numbers even lower.
I donāt really know how CE works vs CS in numbers or apps.
Iām currently going through the full loop with FERPA and the Public Records Act, considering that I see anonymous stats of folks with lower GPA getting admitted DTM CS.
It wonāt change the immediate outcome for my son. Heās now deciding between WSU Honors CS (got invitation to upgrade his admission to honors) versus Concordia CS + co-op program in Montreal. This is closer to where he was born. Chances at UCSD and Carnegie Mellon are slim, though weāre grateful at least he made it to the waitlist at both OOS.. unlike direct in-state reject from UW (facepalm).
That said, Iām hoping the documentation, knowledge, and clarity obtained through FERPA process will help others navigating the UW Direct to Major (DTM) CS admissions journey ā especially since I have another child who will go through this in about five years.
What I really want is clarity on the āholisticā admissions process. From where I stand, āholisticā - doesnāt always align with a truly merit-based approach. If scoring and evaluation exist, they should be transparent and accountable.
Hereās what Iāve requested:
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Any scoring rubrics, evaluator notes, or assessment summaries related to Mās application to the Computer Science major.
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Any internal correspondence (emails, memos, comments) discussing or referencing Mās application file.
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Statistical admissions data to contextualize Mās academic profile ā especially GPA, AP exams, and coursework ā in comparison to those admitted to the Direct to Major CS program. Specifically: P50/P75/P90 GPA and AP distributions, segmented by residency, race/ethnicity (if available), and school district.
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Clarification on FAFSA/citizenship record timing, including any logs or notes showing whether Mās eligibility status was available or factored into the decision prior to the rejection notice.
I am paying significant taxes to support public institutions. I want transparency, accountability, and merit-based college admissions.
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Yes, this is our current plan A right now.
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Thank you for this. I think its long due that we have checks for public universitities. UW will reject in-state kids yet accept someone from a complete different country with subpar qualifications? Just for the extra tuition? Its crazy!
I myself was waitlisted by Cornell, UC Berkeley, CMU, and NYU yet rejected by my in state school. My parents have been paying taxes in this state for the past 28 years. UW probably recived money from our taxes dollars before I was even born! Yet they still have the audacity to reject in-state kids. Not even Presciences or Alternate major - just flat out rejection.
At the end of the day, this all comes down to the politicans/policymakers who have the power to force the schools to really enforce the priotitization of in-state kids. But they wonāt do that unless they have someone pushing them to do so. This same situation happened in California where they were giving OOS kids a higher admit rate than the in-state residents. Some parents collectively decided to sue the UC system and recently they announced that they were going to reduce the percentage of OOS kids admitted to the UCās. Im sure the same thing can happen here for UW but the question is who is willing to do it? People only act when it negatively affects them. Those accepted wonāt bother since they arenāt in this position. Hopefully someone knocks some sense into UW.
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Itās been pretty consistent over the years. UW looks to enroll 4,400 in-state and 2,800 out-of-state + intāl students. This seems like a reasonable mix, and yes helps pay the bills. (there are a lot of details on this above, w/ yield rates etc.) This is very typical across competitive state universities.
There are real concerns however (and differing opinions) about how universities determine who receives those coveted in-state spots.
From what Iāve learned in this excellent discussion there are 3 very interesting topics for UW admissions for future applicants where transparency would be helpful:
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The priorities of UW overall on certain categories of students it looks to admit and how those impact in-state students overall. Not taking a position here - itās just true that a certain number of UW spots are prioritized to first-gen/under-repād students - and those students may well have been admitted anyway or benefit from that priority over someone otherwise admitted without. No data Iāve seen on that one way or the other.
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The probable equally āmerit-fullā students applying in-state to capacity constrained DTM like CS or Foster and how does UW choose among those applicants? One can assume many look very similar on application. Maybe 3k CS applicants for 200 spots in-state for example with probably very similar-ish academic and EC profiles. While Iāve seen higher and lower GPAs/profiles itās hard for me to say one thing should matter more than something else out of context. How does UW score that? Should something matter more or less in admission?
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Does UW give weight to secondary major choices - in small sample size here there are rejections and admissions into secondary majors - so they must look at it, but how much? Are you better off not applying to DTM? We do know that unless you apply CS, Engrud, Foster, Bio, Psych any other major is 2% of less of total applicants so not statistically relevant to UW overall, but perhaps easier to make a decision favorable. Would seem statistically unlikely that particularly fringe major would drive success or not, but maybe.
Great points. Iād just add that I may have less confidence in what theyād āsayā publicly, or communicate in a carefully-worded youtube video. I may not go as far as to say admission departments lie, but Iām confident theyāre not fully forthcoming in some of these areas discussed.
It would be helpful to see the document used to summarize the evaluation of in-state students. I suspect that would make it all pretty clear.
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UW admission Admissions Counselor assigned to our high school - responded back to me with a cookie-cutter, literally a copy-paste of their webpage citing āholisticā admission process. The answer that is less informative than a ChatGPT wouldāve given..
I am personally working on AI systems, so I can tell what jobs would be replaced first, lol.. Not even an attempt to dissect and explain what went wrong, what have affected the application. Totally obscure. It was hastily written as in āHi there, ā¦copy-paste of the pageā¦ā, done.
The Public Records response so far has also been laughable:
"We are writing to inform you that the Office of Public Records and Open Public Meetings has implemented a new system. The information contained in the correspondence you recently sent to our office will be manually entered into this new system by us. You will soon receive an email with instructions for registering your account on our new online portal.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions and thank you for your patience during this transition.
Sincerely,
Office Staff"
Hard to believe a multi-billion-dollar institution is still manually entering records like itās 1998. Very convenient of not having the records, citing that these are somehow lost while being entered into the system manually. Maybe itās related to recent investigation of the admission practices by the Feds.