Students admitted through Direct to College (DTC) engage in an intentional first year engineering experience at the UW before entering a major.

Our first-year experience will facilitate your discovery of different engineering areas and the opportunities they offer. By engaging in our programming, you will be able to narrow your interests in preparation to successfully place into one of our majors at the end of the year.

Building your community

Engineering undeclared students (ENGRUDs) benefit from building connections with fellow students through Engineering First-year Interest Groups (E-FIGs). E-FIGs are clusters of courses that help incoming first-year students make friends, build a community around shared interests, and access academic support in small groups.

Holistic student support

You will be assigned an engineering adviser and an Engineering Peer Educator. Your adviser can help guide your academic planning to ensure that you are on track while maximizing your general education requirements. Our Career Center will help get you internship and job-ready, while the Engineering Academic Center provides tutoring and structured study sessions.

Opportunities to explore engineering

Our suite of engineering exploration events connect you with the larger engineering community, including industry professionals and alumni, to learn how they got to where they are. We encourage students to explore our offerings throughout the year by learning more about the areas they would like to impact with their work.