Registration Policies & Procedures

To audit a course, first register on MyUW, and then inform the Registrar’s Office for an audit grade by completing a Registration Transaction Form. You may choose the audit option by the end of the second week of the quarter. Auditing courses requires instructor consent and space availability. Auditors can participate in only lecture classes, cannot join discussions or labs, and may have their registration canceled at the discretion of the instructor. Audited courses do not appear on transcripts and to receive credit, you must register for the class in a subsequent quarter. Audited courses cannot be switched to credit registrations after the second week of the quarter.

With the exception of ACCESS program students, auditors pay standard tuition and fees and must be officially admitted and registered. Audited course credits appear on the fee statement but not the transcript, and contribute to the calculation of fees.

UW Tacoma may drop students who do not attend class in the first week of the quarter to make space for others who are waiting to enroll. If you do not plan to attend, you must drop the course on MyUW or risk being responsible for fees; do not assume that you will automatically be dropped from a course. Not attending a registered course may result in a failing grade assigned by the instructor.

Restrictions on Attending Classes

Only registered students, or faculty informally attending with instructor approval, can attend a University course. Only students on the official class list from the Office of the Registrar or on a departmental wait list may attend a class. Unregistered students can only attend through the fourteenth day of the quarter if on a departmental wait list. After the fourteenth day, unregistered students are no longer permitted to attend.

Full-Time Requirements

Undergraduate students must register for 12 or more credits, while graduate students must register for 10 or more credits to be considered full-time. Different criteria and standards for full-time enrollment may be required for eligibility in certain programs. Contact the Office of Student Financial Aid for for its requirements on satisfactory academic progress. Note that tuition schedules do not reflect credit requirements for loan deferments, and teaching assistantships or other programs.

After meeting minimum credit requirements at UW Tacoma, you can register for courses at the other UW campuses in Seattle and Bothell through cross-campus registration. Check eligibility table below. Cross-campus registration is available during Registration Period 2 for autumn, winter, and spring quarters, and during Registration Period 1 for summer quarter

Eligibility

Time Schedule links for other campuses:

• UW (Seattle) Time Schedule
• UWB Time Schedule

Credit Limits

A maximum of 15 credits per academic year (autumn through summer quarter) may be taken on a campus other than the home campus. Undergraduate students are limited to a maximum total of 45 credits through cross-campus registration that may be counted toward their degree.

Final-year Residency Requirement

Undergraduate students are required to complete 45 of their final 60 credits as matriculated students in residence at UW Tacoma. Some degree programs may have stricter residency requirements.

To seek an exception to the residency requirement, you need to submit a graduation petition to the UW Tacoma Registrar for review by the Academic Policy and Curriculum Committee (APCC). If an exception is granted, you still must present a minimum of 45 credits taken in residence as a matriculated student to be awarded a UW degree.

Prerequisites and Registration Restrictions

All registration restrictions (e.g., class standing, entry codes) still apply. However, prerequisites taken at the home campus might not be recognized when you register for classes via MyUW. In that case, please contact the academic department offering the course.

Other Considerations

• You may declare a major on only one campus. You cannot declare a cross-campus double major or double degree. If you wish to complete two majors on two different campuses, you must first graduate with a major from one campus, and then gain admission as a post-baccalaureate student to complete the second major at the other campus.
• Only credits taken at the campus granting the degree are considered residence credit. Credits transferred from another UW campus do not count as residence credit, and do not count toward the final-year residence requirement.

Undergraduate students are limited to registering for no more than 19 credits during Registration Periods 1 and 2 to allow all students a chance to develop a basic schedule. Additional credits may be added during Registration Period 3. The maximum limit is 30 credits per quarter.

There are additional tuition charges for any credits over 18 credits. Review Tuition Rates for charges on registering for any credits over 18 credits.

All students who remain in good standing and in compliance with other rules and regulations are guaranteed the opportunity to register each quarter as long as they maintain continuous enrollment (with the exception of summer quarter). Continuation must be in the same classification, i.e., undergraduate, post-baccalaureate (fifth-year), graduate. Once a student earns a baccalaureate degree, they must apply for re-admission as a post-baccalaureate (fifth-year), non-matriculated, or graduate student.

Exceptions to this guarantee include:

With the approval of the academic department offering the course, a student may repeat a course once. Restrictions may include:

• Only allowing registration after Registration Period 1
• Only allowing registration after the quarter has begun, or
• Requiring an entry code for a repeat registration

Courses considered to have been taken once include any numerical grade or those with grades I, CR/NC, or S/NS. Withdrawn or dropped courses and courses with X or no grade reported will not count as the first taking of a course.

Repeating a course at University to get a better grade will not replace a lower grade; both the original grade and the second grade will be computed in the grade-point average (GPA), but credit will be allowed only once. 

A second repeat (taking a class three or more times) cannot be done using MyUW. A second repeat requires the department or the Registrar's Office to register you into the course. Grades in the third or subsequent takings will not be included in the GPA.

• For School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (SIAS): to repeat a course for a second or third time complete the Petition to Repeat A course in the Division of Sciences and Mathematics. For other courses in SIAS, complete the Course Enrollment Request form.
• For School of Engineering & Technology: to repeat a course complete the SET Course Repeat Petition
• For other courses, contact your advisor to seek the required approvals for a second repeat and your advisor will submit the course enrollment request to the Registrar's Office.

Veterans receiving benefits must receive approval from the veterans coordinator in the Veteran and Military Resource Center before a course is repeated.

If you are pursuing a baccalaureate degree, you are expected to make satisfactory progress toward the attainment of that degree and are expected to enter a major and graduate after completion of a reasonable number of credits and quarters. The satisfactory progress policy looks at your total credits, but when counting quarters, only regular academic-year quarters — autumn, winter and spring — are considered. The courses and credits you take during summer quarters count towards your degree requirements and are included in your credit total. Summer quarters are not added to your satisfactory progress quarter total and, thus, do not count against the number of quarters you may complete before the satisfactory progress credit limit is enforced.

Each quarter during week 4, students are notified about the university Satisfactory Progress Policy which can involve both warning and hold messages.

Please note: Individual departments may have additional satisfactory progress requirements. For Financial Aid satisfactory progress information, click here.

A student who tampers or attempts to tamper with the registration records of another student, including but not limited to dropping courses and adding courses, may be subject to disciplinary sanctions as defined in the Student Conduct Code (WAC 478-121).

Registration Abuse

The registration system is provided for the sole express purpose for students to register themselves into sections. Any use of the registration system other than for this purpose is considered abuse of the system. Such abuse includes, but is not limited to, buying or selling one’s seat in a class, or otherwise registering for a section that one has no intention of taking.

To help conserve University resources and ensure the registration system is available to all, students are locked out of Web Registration after a specific number of excessive submission attempts and/or transactions are made per day. This threshold is sufficient for students’ regular use and should not interfere with typical use. The use of robots and other automated tools to submit registration requests is expressly forbidden.

A student whose account is locked out for excessive use must wait until the registration system removes the lockout – within 24 hours. The Office of the Registrar is unable to override a locked account.

System Abuse

Because use of scripts, robots, or other automated queries can adversely impact University network and computing resources and interferes with equal access to registration, such automated querying of registration-related resources is expressly forbidden. Violators may have their access to University network and computing resources terminated and may be subject to action by the University under applicable law, regulation, or policy, including but not limited to, discipline under any applicable University conduct code.

You may not register for two courses that meet at the same time or for courses with overlapping meeting times. If you want to add a course whose schedule conflicts with another, you must add the second course via Registration Transaction Form. Students must obtain approval from both instructors to add a course that conflicts one hour a week or less; instructor signatures are required for courses whose schedules conflict more than one hour per week.