Placement FAQs

Placement fees are assigned to student accounts in the Fall term after all New Coug Orientation sessions have ended, or in the semester when you took the placement assessment. The fee is $40 and is non-refundable once you have taken the assessment and it has been evaluated. Fees are assigned to student accounts after the Writing Program evaluates and posts results in My.Wsu.

Placement assessments are not scored. Instead, they are assigned a code that represents a course or course combination for each student’s first-year writing experience. Contact The Writing Program or your advisor to learn about your placement result.

If you accidentally submitted inaccurate information or the wrong document, you can resubmit. To resubmit, use the same link (if that link is still available) or submit in a different link, and email writing.program@wsu.edu to tell us that you have resubmitted.

If you submit your placement in the same link as your accidental submission, you will need to clear your web browser’s history, cookies, and cache because our submission site will see that you already submitted.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) prohibits us from releasing information about the Writing Placement Assessment to the parents or guardians of students over 18 years of age.

Within the submission site, you must upload your written essay in either a PDF or DOC/DOCX file format. If you do not submit your essay as a PDF or Word file, your essay will not be evaluated and your assessment cannot be completed.

The prompts used in the placement assessment are created by members of the English department and are curated so that you read and respond to a text of comparable sophistication to what you might engage with in a 100-level writing course.  You are not invited to submit an essay you wrote for another class or purpose; the prompt is designed to mimic tasks you might do in a first-year writing course, so it is important that you respond to the prompt.

If you are dissatisfied with your initial placement results, you are allowed to take the placement assessment a second time. Please know that the assessment result from your second attempt is the final score and it will determine the course you are required to take. You will be billed for a second placement assessment.

If you have transfer credit from a previous college or university, the credits being transferred must be equivalent to WSU’s English 101 for you to be exempt from the Writing Placement process. Visit WSU’s Transfer Center.