Substantial Writing Component
& Writing Flag Credit

The Substantial Writing Component (SWC) is a UT Basic Education requirement designed to involve students in writing-intensive coursework related to their majors. Courses taken in residence at UT Austin meet the requirement if they provide at least three “writing activities” (i.e. papers, not essay exams) per semester for a total of at least 4000 words. The full requirement calls for six semester hours, of which three must be upper-division.

The SWC is intended to be fulfilled with credit earned in residence because UT Austin has no control over, nor routine method to verify, the amount of writing performed in courses at other institutions.

However, transfer credit is permitted to count toward the SWC when it is evaluated as one of the following courses dedicated to writing and if the student's degree plan does not specifically require other SWC courses:

* retired course, still awarded
in transfer

lower-division	upper-division
E 309Q* RHE 309K RHE 317	E 321K E 325 E 341 E 355K E 367K RHE 325M RHE 379C

The following retired UT courses are no longer used in transfer evaluations but, for students with transfer credit awarded in the past, also count toward the SWC:

lower-division	upper-division
E 307 E 308 E 308Q E 309K E 310 E 310Q E 317 E 317M	E 325M E 367L E 379C

A typical two-semester freshman rhetoric & composition sequence transfers as RHE 306 (first semester) and RHE 309K (second semester). RHE 306 is required in all UT Austin undergraduate degree plans; 309K satisfies the lower-division portion of the SWC in most UT degrees.

The SWC is a degree requirement and, as such, the Office of Admissions has no authority to certify its fulfillment. If credit does not transfer as one of the courses listed above its SWC applicability is at the discretion of the student's academic dean's office.

For out-transfer purposes, from UT Austin to other Texas public universities and community colleges, three SWC semester hours apply toward statutory core curriculum requirements as communication credit (THECB core code 010) and three as additional communication (011).

• Government courses
• Core Curriculum credit
• Calculus courses
• Introductory Biology courses
• E 316K equivalents
• Computer Science & Management Information Systems credit
• MIS 310 equivalents
• Credit-by-Exam awarded at other institutions
• Workforce courses from community colleges
• Military training & experience
• Common Transfer Credit Issues (home)

• Our Transfer Guides for Austin Community College and other Texas community colleges recommend coursework prospective transfer students should take to apply toward specific UT Austin degree plans.
• The Automated Transfer Equivalency (ATE) system provides interactive access to our database of more than 250,000 transfer credit evaluations for current and past courses at universities and community colleges throughout Texas.
• The Interactive Degree Audit (IDA) system enables prospective transfer students and UT students studying away from UT to estimate the degree applicability of coursework taken at other institutions.
• UT Austin's transfer credit policies are published in the General Information catalog.