Transfer Student Information

I. WAIVING THE EWP WRITING REQUIREMENT 

II. THE NYU PROFICIENCY EXAM REQUIREMENT

 

I. WAIVING THE EWP WRITING REQUIREMENT, EXPOS-UA 1 or EXPOS-UA 5 (Tisch) — EXTERNAL TRANSFER STUDENTS ONLY

Every NYU undergraduate must fulfill a Writing Requirement. Students in CAS, Meyers, Silver, Steinhardt, Silver, Tandon, and Tisch fulfill their Writing Requirement by taking courses in the Expository Writing Program (EWP). 

Qualifying external transfer students may apply for a waiver of EXPOS-UA 1 or EXPOS-UA 5 (Tisch).

WHO MAY APPLY

To qualify, external transfer students must meet these conditions:

  • Students in CAS, Silver, Steinhardt, Tandon and Tisch may apply.

  • Must have 21 or more transferred credits listed as "posted" on the Transfer Credit Summary. (Need help checking if your credits are "posted"? See this page for help.) AP or Test Credits do not count toward this.

  • Please note that if you are an incoming transfer student, your transfer credits will not be listed as "posted" until later in your first semester. You will need to wait until then to apply for this waiver.

  • Students in Silver, Steinhardt, Tandon, and Tisch must also have transferred in credit to satisfy the second-semester writing requirement. Check with your academic advisor to see if you meet this criteria before applying.

  • Students in Silver and Steinhardt must also have taken and passed the Writing Proficiency Exam. For more information about the Writing Proficiency Exam, please see part II below.

WHAT YOU NEED FOR YOUR APPLICATION

To apply for this waiver, you must have extensive experience with academic writing, primarily in courses in the humanities, and you must be able to provide a portfolio of writing demonstrating this. The papers you submit must:  

  • make use of multiple sources; at least one of the papers must make use of multiple secondary sources (preferred in both papers);

  • interpret and analyze evidence, reasoning and making judgments about source materials;

  • structure and organize material in a coherent argument; 

  • use proper citation consistently, including both in-text and ending lists of sources used; must make clear, throughout the paper(s) how source materials are used;

  • demonstrate clear command of mechanics and syntax at the sentence level.      

This is the kind of writing NYU expects students to be able to produce, and that is taught in Expository Writing Program courses. The waiver, when granted, attests to your ability to produce this kind of accomplished writing in the academy.

Papers from two different college or university courses are preferred, to demonstrate a range of experience writing humanities-based papers. Papers from college courses taken while in high school are not allowed.

The papers you submit should be graded by your instructor, and indicate the course for which they were written. If you do not have the original graded copy, you may submit the non-evaluated version with additional verification: a course syllabus or other documents describing the course.

If you have not yet written papers that meet these criteria, you should consult with your advisor to determine whether your career path includes courses with writing intensive assignments. If so, you can apply for the waiver after you have accumulated a qualifying portfolio. If not, you should take the required writing course.

You can access the online waiver application here. A waiver, when granted, exempts a student from the required course. Transfer credits are NOT substituted.  

If you have questions about the Writing Requirement waiver application, please contact the EWP Waiver Application Team at ewp-waiver@nyu.edu.

 

NYU WRITING PROFICIENCY REQUIREMENT

NYU requires the Expository Writing Program (EWP) to certify that students are proficient in writing. Most undergraduates and transfer students at New York University must fulfill the Writing Proficiency requirement. 

For first-year students in the colleges of Arts and Science, Nursing, Silver, and Steinhardt, the requirement is fulfilled by completing either Writing the Essay (EXPOS-UA 1), or International Writing Workshop I (EXPOS-UA 4), with a grade of C or better. Students with C- or lower are required to take the Writing Proficiency exam. Students in Tandon and Tisch do not have the Writing Proficiency requirement as a graduation requirement.

For students who transfer into NYU from another university:

Meyers, Silver, and Steinhardt

As an external transfer student in Meyers, Silver, or Steinhardt, you will have fulfilled the Writing Proficiency requirement if you:

1. Pass the Writing Proficiency Exam 

OR

2. Complete, at NYU, Writing the Essay (EXPOS-UA 1), or International Writing Workshop I (EXPOS-UA 4) with a grade of C or better. Students who complete either course with a grade of C- or less must take the Writing Proficiency exam. 

**Note that while you may receive transfer credit for writing courses taken at your previous institution, this does not exempt you from the exam. Your transfer credits may be used -- as determined by your school -- to satisfy the Expository Writing requirement but this does not exempt you from the exam and the Writing Proficiency requirement.

College of Arts and Science

As a external transfer student in the College of Arts and Science, you will have fulfilled the Writing Proficiency requirement if:

  1. You are granted transfer credit for the Expository Writing requirement by admissions or your school. Please note that the final evaluation and approval of your transfer credit will likely be sometime in your first semester. 

OR

  1. You apply for and are granted a waiver from the Expository Writing requirement by EWP (see part I above). Please note that to apply for this waiver, your transfer credits need to be listed as “posted,” which will not happen until sometime in your first semester.

OR

  1. You complete Writing the Essay (EXPOS-UA 1), or International Writing Workshop I (EXPOS-UA 4) with a grade of C or better. Students who complete either course with a grade of C- or less must take the Writing Proficiency exam.

About the Writing Proficiency Exam

For the exam, students have one hour to compose a written response to a prompt provided at the start of the exam period. The passing exam will exhibit a student’s ability to read and construct a coherent and cogent response to the provided text, demonstrating the ability to use grammatical conventions and sentence structures in ways that would be appropriate in an academic or professional environment.

Students who fail the Writing Proficiency Exam are required to take a four-credit course, Writing Tutorial (EXPOS-UA 13), or an equivalent, recommended by the Writing Proficiency Exam team, or in consultation with an academic advisor.

The Writing Proficiency Exam is administered online. If you need to take the exam, please contact the EWP Writing Proficiency Team at ewp-proficiency-exam@nyu.edu.