Is University of Washington-Bothell Campus Worth It?

UW Bothell gives you a strong financial return with low risk. You pay around $11,000 a year net, borrow a median of $14,615, and finish with median earnings near $78,000 a decade out. That debt-to-earnings gap is wide in your favor, and an 86% retention rate plus a 68% graduation rate means most people who start actually finish and start paying it back.

The payoff depends heavily on your major. Computer engineering leads at over $120,000, with computer science close behind above $100,000. Both sit near the Seattle-area tech employers, so the regional job market backs up those numbers. Nursing and electrical engineering land in the low $70,000s with the lowest debt loads on the list. The general computer and information sciences track pays around $71,500 despite carrying tech-level debt, so it earns roughly $30,000 less than the computer engineering degree at a similar cost. If you enroll for computing, pick the specific engineering or CS path, not the general one.

The main financial risk is fit. Every top-earning program here is a STEM or health field. There's no listed bachelor-level data for humanities or social science majors, so their earnings are unknown, and you'd be taking that bet without numbers to back it up.

The net price tiers are where families should look closely. Under $48,000 in income, you pay around $5,000 to $6,000 a year. That jumps to $16,230 in the $75,000-$110,000 range and $23,389 above $110,000. If your family earns over six figures, this is close to full-price public tuition, and the return only justifies it if you're heading into computing, engineering, or nursing. Lower-income families get the best deal here by a wide margin.