APPLYING TO WAIVE YOUR WRITING REQUIREMENT — EXTERNAL TRANSFER STUDENTS ONLY
Every NYU undergraduate must fulfill a Writing Requirement. Students in CAS, Meyers, Silver, Steinhardt, Silver, Tandon, Tisch and the majority of students at Stern fulfill their Writing Requirement by taking courses in the Expository Writing Program (EWP).
Qualifying external transfer students may apply for a waiver from the Writing Requirement.
WHO MAY APPLY
To qualify, external transfer students must meet these conditions:
Students in CAS, Meyers, Steinhardt, Stern, Tandon and Tisch may apply.
Must have 21 or more transferred credits. NO AP or Test credits can be counted.
Students in Meyers, Steinhardt, Stern, 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 Meyers, Steinhardt, Stern, and CAS must also have taken and passed the Writing Proficiency Exam. (Students in Tandon and Tisch are exempt from this criteria.) For more information and to schedule an exam, please see further 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 exhibit an ability to:
research, incorporate and interpret texts;
read evidence analytically and selectively;
reason and make judgments;
use proper citation consistently;
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.
You should submit papers from two different college or university courses, that meet the criteria listed above. 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.
To schedule an exam, or for any other questions or concerns about the Writing Proficiency Exam, please contact the EWP Writing Proficiency Team at ewp-proficiency-exam@nyu.edu.
Fulfilling the New York University/Writing Proficiency Exam Requirement
NYU requires the Expository Writing Program (EWP) to certify that students are proficient in writing. Depending on your school, 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, Social Work, Steinhardt, and Stern, 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:
1) Transfer students who are required to complete one semester of writing must take either Writing the Essay (EXPOS-UA 1), or International Writing Workshop I (EXPOS-UA 4). Completing either course with a C or better fulfills the Writing Proficiency Exam requirement. Students with C- or lower are required to take the Writing Proficiency exam.
2) Transfer students who are exempted or granted credit by the admissions office for the writing requirement must take the Writing Proficiency Exam.
There is no waiver or exemption from the Writing Proficiency requirement for the following schools: Arts and Science, Nursing, Social Work, Steinhardt, and Stern.
Transfer students must fulfill the Writing Proficiency requirement in their first term at NYU. Most programs will offer the Writing Proficiency Exam to new transfer students during Welcome Week. For information about exam dates and locations, please see communications from your academic advisor.
Students receive one hour to compose a brief written response (3 paragraphs) to a prompt provided at the start of the exam period. Responses should exhibit a student’s grasp of English usage and be coherent. They should also demonstrate an 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.
If you have further questions or concerns, you may contact the EWP Writing Proficiency Team at ewp-proficiency-exam@nyu.edu.