In many instances, students cannot register for 100-level math and foreign-language courses until they have taken a placement test.
The Testing Center, 440 Schmitz Hall, offers placement tests for math, CHEM 145, and music theory, and placement and/or proficiency tests for several foreign languages. A list of the scheduled test dates, times, and fees, and information about the topics covered by the tests, are available online.
The postbaccalaureate program is designed for individuals who have a bachelor's degree or another advanced degree in a discipline other than what is required to apply directly to a master's program to which they now wish to gain admission.
Postbaccalaureate is a matriculated status, reserved for students who are working toward a second bachelor's degree, or preparing for entrance to graduate or professional school.
Students who are not able to declare a major before accumulating 105 credits must meet with an adviser. If the adviser decides that the student is pursuing a reasonable goal, an extension is granted for a specific number of quarters. Students who have not declared a major when the extension expires must meet with an adviser again.
Undecided students are normally allowed only one or two quarters of extension to come to a decision.
Premedicine, predentistry, pre-veterinary medicine, and prelaw are not undergraduate majors at the University of Washington, but rather suggested programs of study that prepare you to apply to professional programs. Many professional programs prefer or require a bachelor's degree, so you should plan to complete an undergraduate major as well as the prerequisites of the professional program in which you are interested. In all cases, your choice of major does not affect your chances of admission to a professional program; choose a major in which you are interested, with coursework you enjoy.
A prerequisite is a course you must complete before you can take the course in question. Prerequisites are listed on the online Course Descriptions page.
For courses like this, if you have the prerequisite in progress when you register (e.g., you have MATH 120 in progress when you register for MATH 124), the computer checks at the end of the quarter to make sure you successfully completed the prerequisite. If not, your registration for the course is automatically cancelled (i.e., you're dropped from the course) and you're sent notification by email. Your seat then becomes available to other students. Courses with cancellation in effect usually require a minimum grade in the prerequisite; this grade is included in the prerequisite statement in the online Course Description.
The flipside of all this is that after the class is full, it is likely that seats will open up when other students are cancelled from the course. So if you haven't been able to get a seat, check on the cancellation days.
An undergraduate student is placed on academic probation at the end of any quarter (except for the first quarter at the University, when an academic warning is issued) in which his or her cumulative GPA falls below 2.00. The student remains on probation until the cumulative GPA is raised to at least 2.00. If this requires more than one quarter's work, the student must maintain a quarterly GPA of at least 2.50 each succeeding quarter or the student is dropped for low scholarship.
UW Professional & Continuing Education offers continuing education programs, online learning and other educational opportunities for working adults. They offers more than 100 certificate programs, hundreds of classroom-based and online learning classes, and various workshops and lectures. UW Extension attracts more than 27,000 enrollments each year.
Professional degree programs, usually three or four years in length, prepare students for professions such as medicine, dentistry, and law, and (at other universities) podiatry, optometry, and veterinary medicine. In most cases, prior completion of a bachelor's degree is required. Examples of degrees:
M.D. (Doctor of Medicine)
D.D.S. (Doctor of Dental Surgery)
Pharm.D. (Doctor of Pharmacy)
LL.B. (Legum Baccalaureus - law)
J.D. (Juris Doctor - law)
D.V.M. (Doctor of Veterinary Med)
