Advising

In an attempt to equitably support as many prospective and current Allen School students as we can, we ask that students adhere to the following appointment policies:

Maximum Number of Appointments: A student may only schedule a maximum of three peer advising appointments per quarter. Additionally, students may schedule no more than one appointment in any 14 day period (2 week period). Please note that our peer advisers are not available for appointments during finals week of each quarter in addition to winter break, spring break, and summer break.

New appointments are available to book up to 3 weeks in advance. If you see no available meetings please check back for more availability regularly as students reschedule/cancel appointments and that can make new appointments available that were previously not showing as options.

If you can’t find an appointment and need to talk about an immediate problem, current and prospective Allen School students can attend our Quick Questions (drop-in advising hours) to talk with a staff adviser. Quick Questions are available M-F during the academic year. You can also contact our Peer Advisers via email: peer-adviser@cs.washington.edu.

Personal Statement Review Appointment Guidelines: Prospective Allen School students applying via the Current UW admissions pathway can have their personal statement reviewed by a Peer Adviser twice per application cycle.

Late, Cancellation, & No-Show Policy: We understand that life happens, technology is imperfect, and that we’re all generally doing the best we can. However, advising appointments are in high demand and can be difficult to schedule, and it is important to be considerate of both the peer advisers’ and other students’ time. Missing meetings deprives another student of the opportunity to meet with a peer adviser and takes away from peer advisers’ time to assist students.

Late Policy: If you are more than 10 minutes late to your scheduled advising appointment, your appointment will be canceled, marked as a “no-show”, and you will be asked to reschedule.

Canceling Appointments: If you need to cancel a scheduled appointment, please give 24 hours advance notice if possible, and cancel the appointment using the confirmation email you were sent after booking. Even if you can’t give 24 hours’ notice, emailing us to let us know you can’t make it as soon as you can is greatly appreciated.

No-Shows: No-shows without prior notification are logged in our scheduling system. Repeat no-shows could result in a student being prevented from scheduling future appointments.

Please reach out to peer-adviser@cs.washington.edu if you have any questions.

To support prospective current UW students who are applying to the Allen School, we are excited to offer the following resources:

• In-person or virtual 1:1 personal statement review appointments (RSVP required, space is limited)
• A presentation for you to view that provides best practices and suggestions for how to write a strong personal statement for your application

In-Person Personal Statement Workshops

The Allen School Peer Adviser team typically hosts two to three in-person personal statement workshops in January of each year where students will receive information about the best practices for personal statement writing and then will have open unstructured time to work on their personal statements. Peer Advisers will be present to answer questions – please note that Allen School Academic Advisers do not provide feedback on personal statements. Each session does have a capacity limit to ensure attendees will have opportunities to ask questions within the workshop time.

Participants are limited to attending a maximum of one group workshop. Reserve a spot to attend a workshop.

20 min in-person or virtual 1:1 Peer Adviser Appointments

Schedule a 1:1 review appointment (in-person or virtual). All in-person appointments will be held in the Bill & Melinda Gates Center building (CSE2), in the undergraduate student services suite on the first floor. 

Please note our new appointment policy which was made in an attempt to equitably support as many prospective and current Allen School students as we can. Students may only schedule a maximum of three peer advising appointments per quarter and no more than one appointment in any 14 day period (2 week period).

Additional Questions & Support

If you would like to discuss course planning or have other admission questions, please book an appointment to meet with a Peer Adviser, or attend Quick Questions to chat with an Allen School Academic Adviser (held Monday-Friday). See our Advising Calendar. More information about course prerequisites, the personal statement prompt, and the application process can be found on this page.  Additionally, all prospective students are highly encouraged to attend a current UW student information session, held on the second Tuesday of each month via Zoom. 

Please reach out to peer-adviser@cs.washington.edu if you have any questions.