Rank 4 of 6 · Seattle, Washington

UW MHCI+D

Master of Human-Computer Interaction + Design

The craft year. Portfolio in, portfolio out, Seattle on the doorstep.

Official program site Start a comparison

Visa prior is a planning range for OPT and for whether employers in that market sponsor. It is not an admission rate. All-in sketch is tuition plus a living estimate, not an invoice.

Overview

Why it sits at 4.

Best program in this set if the gap in your application is design craft and you want it fixed in a year. Weaker if you need a long internship before you can interview.

MHCI+D is a fee-based, self-sustaining STEM master’s. Tuition is the same for residents, nonresidents, and international students, charged per credit. The apply page lists a 46-credit minimum.

The culture is studio and critique. You are there to make, test, and iterate in a cohort, not to sample an entire information school.

Seattle is the point. Amazon, Microsoft, and a thick layer of product teams recruit here. A one-year clock means you interview on the work you brought plus the work you make in autumn and winter, not on a summer return offer.

Where it is strong

Studio craft and human-centered making
Seattle tech ecosystem
Same tuition for every student, so residency games do not matter
Speed: one year, then a salary

What you give up

Published tuition estimate is $63,618 (46 × $1,383) before quarterly fees.
Almost no institutional aid. The program says most students use loans and savings.
No built-in long internship. The job search runs during the program.
Seattle rent will compete with tuition for your attention.

Curriculum and learning model

What the year actually is.

A locked, cohort-based year rather than a track menu. Studio, prototyping, and human-centered methods carry the degree. Technical and strategy electives exist inside a short calendar, so you add a skill; you do not change fields twice.

Physical and digital prototyping is the pedagogical center. Show you have done it, or show you can learn it fast.
46 credits is the minimum on the apply page. Fees (registration, technology, U-Pass) sit on top of the per-credit price.
The year is too short for a slow ramp. The first studio is already portfolio material.

Capstone and internship

The piece that becomes the portfolio.

The year culminates in a substantial team design project. It is the case study you graduate with. It is not a substitute for a summer at a company, because there often is no separate summer left.

Start the case-study writeup during the project, not after the exhibit.
Team composition matters more here than at a large elective program. You cannot hide.
Recruiting relationships in Seattle are the other capstone. Use them in parallel, not after.

Cohort and intensity

Who is in the room, and how hard the week is.

Class size: The public class-of-2026 roster on the program site is on the order of 35–40 students. That is a headcount of a webpage, not an official cap.
Workload: Editorial band: 50 hours or more in peak studio weeks. Critique, plus a job search, is the load. People underestimate the second one.
How people work: Studio cohort. Daily collaboration, shared crit, less elective wandering. Intense and socially small.

A class this size means faculty know the work. It also means one bad team stings.
International students should assume the search starts in quarter one.

Cost of attendance

About $94,000–$108,000 for the year before quarterly fees, at the tuition figure published on the apply page.

Cost lines for UW MHCI+D
Line	Amount	Note
Tuitionofficial	$1,383 per credit · $63,618 estimated	MHCI+D apply page: 46-credit minimum at $1,383. Same price for all students. Confirm it has not been revised for your entry year. The page has carried this figure across cycles.
UW graduate housing and food, 2026–27official	$23,199 academic year, on or off campus	UW financial-aid cost of attendance for a standard Seattle graduate student, not an MHCI+D invoice. It is a nine-month-style budget.
12-month Seattle livingestimate	$30,000–$40,000	Planning band above the nine-month figure because the program runs about a full year in a high-rent market. Roommates are assumed.

$94,000–$108,000 plus fees. One year of cash, then you can earn. That is the ROI case against two-year programs with similar tuition-per-year. It fails if Seattle rent blows the top of the band and you have no savings.

Funding and scholarships

What you can actually plan on.

Fee-based and self-sustaining. The program states it does not qualify for the full set of state-funded fellowships and that students are not eligible for tuition-exemption programs such as Husky Promise. Loans, savings, a competitive GSEE supplemental award, and employer support are the listed paths.

FAFSA priority is 15 January if you are eligible to file. Many international students are not.
Do not expect a GRA culture like a funded PhD or even like Georgia Tech.
Some employers pay. Almost none of them are your current employer unless you already negotiated it.

Application readiness

Deadline, materials, and the GRE question.

Deadline

18 January 2027. Applications open 1 October. Confirm both on mhcid.washington.edu/apply.

GRE

Not part of the published requirements reviewed for this site.

Statement of intent. 500–800 words.
One-minute video. Required.
Portfolio or project evidence. Show work you made, changed, or tested. This program can tell a moodboard from a process.
Recommendations, resume, transcripts. Standard. Letters should speak to collaboration, not only talent.
English test. If required for you, check the graduate school cutoff early. Studio discussion is daily.

Cross-program differences are collected in the application guide.

Outcomes and the job market

What “placed” means here.

Very strong for product design and UX roles on the West Coast, especially Seattle. The program does not publish a class-wide salary and employment report comparable to Michigan or Berkeley’s median. Location and portfolio do the work the missing PDF would have done.

Search time. Planning band: 2–6 months, overlapping the last half of the program. Longer if the portfolio is still student-only in March.

Roles to picture

Product designer
UX designer
Interaction designer
UX researcher

Employer pattern

Seattle-area product companies, including Amazon and Microsoft alumni pipelines
West Coast product teams
Studios, with the usual visa caveat

You are hiring into design. PM is possible and not the program’s center.
Without an internship, your MHCI+D project has to be as legible as professional work.
International students should target teams that have sponsored, and start that list in October.

Acceptance rate

Not published. No rate on the apply page reviewed. A cohort around the high thirties and a portfolio-plus-video filter make this meaningfully selective for designers, and less relevant as a comparison for career-switching PMs.

Indices

Five scores and a visa range.

Relative to these six programs only. Higher selectivity means a harder door, not a better school. How the scores are built.

Livability

6 / 10

Seattle’s daily life is excellent if you like weather, water, and transit in the core. Rent is the tax. A score of 6 is the city with the cost dragged out of an 8.

Job security

8 / 10

Excellent for product design and UX where Seattle hires. Less automatic for PM than Berkeley, less nationally mythic than CMU, more craft-legible than either. The missing internship keeps it off a 9.

Future proof

7 / 10

Prototyping and human-centered practice age well, including for AI products, if you point projects at them. A one-year studio will not give you Berkeley’s systems depth or Georgia Tech’s computing track. Electives are real and few.

Selectivity

7 / 10

Small cohort, required video, portfolio that has to show making. Harder than the large information-school master’s programs. Not a published-rate story.

ROI

7 / 10

Tuition near $64k and a high-rent year, then you earn. Better cash shape than Berkeley or Michigan. Worse than Austin on tuition, better if craft was the thing holding your career back.

Visa chances

55–70%

The apply page calls the program a STEM program. Seattle employers sponsor, and many design roles still do not. No internship means fewer conversion paths. The top of the range is a strong portfolio aimed at large product orgs. The bottom is a studio search that starts in May.

Essay strategy

Statement of Intent · 500–800 words

Lead with a human problem you worked through prototypes, not with a tool list. The program’s center is human-centered making in physical and digital form.
Describe one loop: people, artifact, what failed, what you changed. Faculty have read hundreds of ‘I am passionate about users.’
Say why a one-year studio is the right container. If you actually want a two-year research degree, this essay will sound cramped because the program is.
Seattle can be one sentence. Do not spend the essay on the companies you hope will hire you.
The video should show you thinking out loud about a piece of work. A polished brand reel with no decision in it wastes the minute.

Related comparisons

The pairs worth opening.

UW MHCI+D vs Carnegie Mellon MHCI
Both finish in a year. Choose craft and Seattle, or capstone, brand, and Pittsburgh prices.
Open this pair
UW MHCI+D vs Georgia Tech MS-HCI
Choose a studio year, or an 18-month degree with a required internship and more technical range.
Open this pair

Sources · updated 11 October 2026

Where the numbers came from.

Official figures are marked on the cost table. Estimates are planning bands, labeled as such. Open the source before you cite a number in your own notes.

What these words mean

Decision framework: The rules for reading the order on the homepage. It is a weighting for one applicant, not a quality ladder of the six schools.
Indices: Five scores from 1 to 10: livability, job security, future proof, selectivity, and ROI. Each score compares these six programs only.
Visa prior: A planning range for OPT and for whether employers in that market sponsor. It is not an admission rate and not a promise.
Future proof: How directly the curriculum treats human-AI work, systems, and the mix of research, craft, and technical skill after 2026.
Job security: How usable the path is into product design, UX research, or product management: brand, network, internship, and where alumni land.
All-in sketch: Tuition plus a living estimate for the length of the degree. Not an invoice. Fees, flights, and aid sit outside it unless a line says so.
Holds: Where the program is strong for this decision.
Costs you: What you give up, or the risk you take, if you pick it.
Full freight: You pay the published tuition. Do not assume a scholarship or an assistantship will cut it.

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