Departmental Honors

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Requirements to apply for CSE Departmental Honors

A student must meet the following requirements in order to apply:

1. A cumulative UW GPA of at least 3.3.
2. A cumulative GPA of at least 3.5 in all CSE courses.
3. Be a Computer Science or Computer Engineering major.

**All students in the UW Honors Program must complete departmental honors, in addition to the Honors Program requirements, to graduate "with College Honors." Students who complete departmental honors (and are not in the UW Honors Program) will graduate "with Distinction."

Application form

Submit a departmental honors application to a CSE advisor at least one quarter before graduation. PDF versions of the application forms can be found here:

• Computer Science
• Computer Engineering (submit with copies of all college transcripts)

Requirements to graduate with Departmental Honors

To graduate with honors, a student must:

1. Maintain the minimum UW and departmental GPA required for honors (listed above).
2. Take nine credits of graded research in honors section 498B. If you are uncertain whether or not your research will lead to an honors project when you start, you may take the first three credits in CSE 498A. However, the last six credits of honors work must be in 498B.
3. Your faculty advisor must be a CSE faculty member. If you are working on a research project in another department, you much have a CSE faculty member approve your project and sign off on your thesis and presentation.
4. Give an oral presentation, arranged by the student and faculty advisor, on the honors project.
5. Submit a Senior Thesis that meets the following requirements:

• It should be a well-written, clearly presented document, typically 15-25 pages in length.
• It should be work done independently by the student under the supervision of a faculty member.
• The work should be original and demonstrate creative thinking, as judged by the faculty supervisor.
• An approved copy of the thesis, with the faculty advisor's signature on the cover page, must be submitted to the undergraduate advisors.

Students typically complete their thesis during their last quarter of research. Once a decision is made to pursue departmental honors, the student should notify his/her faculty advisor and determine the topic for the senior thesis. The honors research and project should be completed with one faculty member, or, in the rare instance where a student needs to switch advisors, faculty within the same area of research as the original advisor. Once the thesis is completed, one copy should be submitted to the faculty supervisor and one to the CSE undergraduate advisors. Students who do not meet the honors thesis requirements will not graduate with honors even if nine credits of research have been successfully completed. In many cases, faculty will not issue grades for honors research until the entire project is finished and approved.

	Computer Science & Engineering University of Washington Box 352350 Seattle, WA  98195-2350 (206) 543-1695 voice, (206) 543-2969 FAX [comments to ugrad-advisor]