At a Glance
Washington admits 41.7% of applicants.
What You'll Actually Pay
See what families at different income levels actually pay after aid.
Net price data temporarily unavailable. Visit each school's net price calculator directly.
Where the Sticker Price Goes
Sticker price
Not reported by this school
Debt at Graduation
Not reported by this school
receive need-based grant aid
$19,384
average debt at graduation
Washington graduates carry an average of $19,384 in debt.
Merit Aid
3,695
students received merit aid
$4,362
average merit award
Getting In
Washington admits 41.7% of applicants.
Washington does not use SAT or ACT scores in admission decisions. The ranges below describe only the students who submitted a score anyway — they were not part of the decision.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 19% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 5% of the class submitted
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
University of Washington rates your personal essay as Very Important — equal weight to your GPA. Don't underestimate it. Demonstrated interest is Not Considered here — campus visits and emails to admissions won't affect your odds.
Student Life
28.5% of Washington classes have fewer than 20 students.
Share of undergraduate class sections at each size, from CDS Section I-3. More red = more large lectures.
At Washington, 28.5% of your classes will have fewer than 20 students.
Class size data reflects all undergraduate sections including labs, seminars, and lectures. Large research universities often have smaller upper-division and graduate-level sections that improve the overall distribution. First and second-year students typically experience larger classes than these averages suggest.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section I-3 (class sizes)
21:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
From out of state (freshman class)
25.9%
Live on campus
24.4%
Men in fraternities
6.76%
Women in sororities
9.13%
Greek-life participation from UW OFSL (2025) — not reported in Washington's 2025–26 Common Data Set.
Who Attends
Racial and ethnic breakdown of enrolled undergraduates, as reported in each school's Common Data Set. "Unknown / Other" includes students who did not report or selected "other."
Washington's student body is 32.9% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
Washington graduates 74.6% of students in 4 years.
Graduating late means paying for extra semesters. The 6-year rate tells you who eventually finishes — the 4-year rate tells you what it actually costs.
Washington graduates 74.6% of students in 4 years.
What finishing late actually costs
Based on each school's published cost of attendance. Public school costs shown at in-state rates.
Washington
74.6%
4-yr grad rate
Data pending
* In-state cost of attendance. Out-of-state students pay significantly more.
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2025–26, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
85%
Overall 6-yr rate
79%
Pell recipient rate
There's a 6 point gap between overall and Pell Grant graduation rates. Worth asking the school about support resources.
Freshman Retention
95%
95% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Seattle.
Seattle is a genuine major city and the campus sits inside it rather than beside it — ten minutes north of downtown, wedged between Portage Bay and Lake Washington, with the University District's buses and cheap restaurants running right up to the edge of the Quad. Mountains and salt water are close enough to be part of an ordinary weekend, and the grey, wet stretch from November through March is long and real. The honest caveat is cost: Seattle is one of the more expensive cities in the country to live in, rents run well above the national median, and a family should price out four years of off-campus housing here before falling for the setting.
Notable Alumni
Bruce Lee
The martial artist and actor who brought kung fu cinema to a global audience; he enrolled here in 1961 to study philosophy and taught martial arts in Seattle to support himself, leaving in 1964 without finishing the degree.
Linda B. Buck
Won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the family of odorant receptors that lets the brain distinguish thousands of smells.
Thomas S. Foley
Served as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1989 to 1995, then as U.S. ambassador to Japan.
Warren Moon
Quarterbacked Washington to victory in the 1978 Rose Bowl as the game's most valuable player, and later became the first Black quarterback inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Jeffrey Brotman
Co-founded Costco in 1982 and chaired the company until his death in 2017, building it into one of the largest retailers in the world.
Gary Kildall
Wrote CP/M, the first widely used operating system for personal computers, and founded Digital Research to sell it.
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
Major city
Seattle, WA
Best For
Traditions
Cherry blossoms in the Quad
Twenty-nine Yoshino cherry trees, moved to the Liberal Arts Quadrangle from the Washington Park Arboretum in 1962, bloom for about two weeks each March. The university publishes peak-bloom predictions and the Quad fills with tens of thousands of visitors while they are open.
Sailgating
Husky Stadium sits on the shore of Union Bay, and thousands of fans arrive for home football games by boat, anchoring or taking a dock slip and walking in from the water. The practice goes back to the stadium's opening in 1920 and makes this one of only a handful of college stadiums in the country you can reach without a car.
Dubs, the live husky
The university keeps a live Alaskan Malamute as its mascot, who leads the football team onto the field before home games and appears at events across campus. The current Dubs is the fourteenth live husky in a line stretching back to the 1920s.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Seattle
Snoqualmie Pass
1 hourFour linked ski areas an hour east on I-90, with night skiing close enough to go after class and be back the same evening; in summer the same trailheads are the standard day hike.
Mount Rainier National Park
2 hours 15 minutesThe 14,410-foot volcano you can see from campus on a clear day, with wildflower meadows at Paradise and glacier viewpoints an easy walk from the road.
Vancouver, British Columbia
2 hours 30 minutesA major international city straight up I-5, and the big-weekend trip. It needs a passport and a border crossing, so it takes more planning than the drive time suggests.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA)
30 minutes from campus
Flies international — you can start a trip abroad from here.
Pro sports nearby
- Seattle Seahawks NFL15 minutes away
- Seattle Mariners MLB15 minutes away
- Seattle Kraken NHL15 minutes away
- Seattle Sounders FC MLS15 minutes away
- Seattle Storm WNBA15 minutes away
Career Proximity
Seattle is one of a very small number of American cities where a student can intern at a company that defines its industry without leaving town. Amazon's headquarters is roughly fifteen minutes south of campus in South Lake Union, Microsoft is about twenty-five minutes east in Redmond, and Boeing builds aircraft north and south of the city. The research side is just as close: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center sits a mile from campus and the Gates Foundation is downtown, which puts global health and biotech work within a bus ride rather than a summer relocation.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Amazon
- Microsoft
- Boeing
- Starbucks
- Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Downtown Seattle and South Lake Union, about 15 minutes south of campus; the Eastside tech corridor in Redmond and Bellevue is about 25 minutes east across Lake Washington
Who Thrives Here
Washington is a 703-acre campus wedged between two lakes ten minutes north of downtown Seattle, and the city is inseparable from what it offers: Amazon is fifteen minutes south, Microsoft twenty-five minutes east, and a student can hold an internship at a company that defines its industry without leaving town. The counterweight is what living there costs, and it is not small — only 24.4% of undergraduates live in university housing, so a family should price four years of Seattle rent before falling for the setting. Admissions work on a different principle here: standardized test scores are Not Considered, class rank is Not Considered, and the application essay is rated Very Important, which is unusual for a public university of this size. State residency is Very Important too, and the enrolled class shows it — 64.5% of first-years are Washingtonians against 25.9% from out of state. The scale shows up in the classroom — 28.5% of sections have fewer than 20 students, at 21 to 1 — and a student who needs small rooms to stay engaged should go in knowing that. Outcomes hold: 95.0% of first-years return, 74.6% graduate in four years and 85.0% within six, and the year peaks quietly in March when the twenty-nine cherry trees in the Quad bloom for a fortnight. Two cautions worth naming: Washington meets 74.0% of demonstrated need rather than all of it, and the gap between $13,406 in state and $44,640 out of it decides this school for most families before anything else does. Borrowers leave owing $19,384.