Our Mission
The University Honors Program engages a diverse population of students through a rigorous curriculum that promotes expansive, innovative thinking and conscious global citizenship. The UW Honors Program engages students with the issues of our times through innovation and collaboration. Our students grapple with complex global issues of power and privilege through coursework, experiential learning, leadership, and intentional learning from diverse communities.
Overview
Operating as a service unit within the office of Undergraduate Academic Affairs, the Honors Program brings students and faculty from every corner of campus together for original learning opportunities focused on cross-disciplinary curriculum, experiential learning, research, and critical reflection. Our Program runs a comprehensive Interdisciplinary/College pathway and oversees Departmental Honors pathways to annually enroll approximately 1400 undergraduates, with about two-thirds of the students in Interdisciplinary/College Honors and the remaining one-third in Departmental Honors.
Why Honors
What is Honors?
Honors prepares students to ask and answer bold questions about the challenges facing our ever-changing world. The UW Honors Program offers multiple pathways for achieving a degree with Honors from the UW. Students may engage in Interdisciplinary Honors, Departmental Honors, or both by earning a degree with College Honors. Regardless of what pathway students choose, your students are our students, and they are an active and important part of our Honors Program community – eligible for Honors student community groups and activities, Honors scholarships, Honors study abroad, and so much more. Our students participate in small classes with faculty from all across campus and are involved across the university, sharing their enthusiastic engagement with their communities – local, national, and international. Ultimately, our mission is to create engaged citizens and leaders who serve their communities.
Who should apply?
The Honors Program is a community of curious people who think about college as more than a place to earn a degree but as a place to explore and grow. We seek students who are eager to think in complex ways about big global challenges, challenge themselves to take risks along the way, and act in the world through the lens of their own diverse experiences. Don’t let test scores and GPA hold you back from discovering your full potential at the University of Washington. We won’t.
Learn More About Applying to Honors
Honors at a Glance
3
Paths to Honors
$1.2M+
in Scholarships & Awards
100+
Majors represented
Honors Options
Students apply for different Honors pathways at different times in their undergraduate career, depending on their goals. Upon fulfilling the combined requirements of both Honors and their major programs, these students add the distinction of Interdisciplinary, Departmental, or College Honors to their UW degree at graduation.
Interdisciplinary Honors
The distinction of Interdisciplinary Honors indicates an undergraduate career engaged in critical thinking beyond silos — noticing how and why ideas connect across all areas of knowledge. Students join this pathway beginning early in their academic careers (mostly as incoming first-years) and practice learning and leading as adaptive global citizens until the time of graduation.
The Interdisciplinary Honors curriculum merges sciences and humanities to fulfill UW general education requirements; primarily through small, seminar-style classes. Experiential learning requirements guarantee development outside of the classroom while Honors’ portfolio practice strengthens writing, reflection, and synthesis across disciplines.
Departmental Honors
Students who delve more deeply into their majors through upper-level electives, research, or an extended thesis conducted in close working relationships with faculty mentors can earn the distinction of Departmental Honors.
Departmental Honors is an excellent pathway for those who have been admitted to an undergraduate degree program and wish to forge close ties with faculty, distinguish themself in their field, and advance knowledge in an area of interest. Requirements and application procedures differ across all majors and interested students should consult an academic adviser within their department for full details.
College Honors
Students earn the distinction of College Honors when they integrate many areas of knowledge and ways of learning with deeper, generative experience in their chosen field(s) by completing requirements for both Interdisciplinary and Departmental Honors.
This is the highest Honors distinction possible, combining all of the benefits of our Interdisciplinary Pathway with the benefits of Departmental Honors.
Equity and Justice Statement
The UW Honors Program fosters an environment grounded in ethics of intersectional equity, diversity and justice for advanced and socially-engaged intellectual growth, and as a foundation for life-long learning. We believe equity, diversity and justice are core principles of ethical academic engagement, and we hold ourselves accountable to be a better and stronger Honors Program with these values threaded throughout everything we do.
We recognize that “…in order to support and sustain diversity and equity at the UW, as well as in the local, regional and global communities we serve, we must directly confront bias and racism at the individual, institutional and systemic levels” (UW Race and Equity Initiative). We see this work as vital and as part of ongoing institutional transformation at the University of Washington.