University of Washington

The University of Washington is a public research university in Seattle. It was founded in 1861 as the Territorial University of Washington, which makes it one of the oldest public universities on the West Coast. In 1895 it moved from downtown Seattle to its current campus of about 700 acres between Union Bay and Portage Bay. The university system also includes campuses in Bothell and Tacoma.

The Seattle campus has more than a dozen colleges and schools. They include the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, the Foster School of Business, the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, the Information School and the School of Medicine, which trains physicians across the five-state WWAMI region. Major research sites include the Institute for Protein Design, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the Applied Physics Laboratory and Harborview Medical Center.

UW enrolls about 60,000 students across its three campuses. Roughly 50,000 of them study in Seattle, and more than 15,000 are graduate and professional students. International students make up about 15 percent of enrollment. Nobel laureates on the faculty have included Hans Dehmelt, Leland Hartwell and David Baker, who shared the 2024 chemistry prize for computational protein design. Alumni include Nobel laureate Linda Buck and painter Chuck Close.

The Graduate School oversees research PhDs, thesis master's degrees and a large set of professional master's programs in fields such as data science, public health and information management. The university runs on a quarter calendar of three ten-week terms plus summer. Doctoral students are usually funded through teaching and research assistantships that come with a stipend and health insurance. Microsoft, Amazon and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center give graduate students research and internship links close to campus.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, University of Washington lists 318 graduate programs across 53 subjects: 182 master's programs and 124 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in public health, education and music. University of Washington holds rank 25 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.