Courses & Degree Requirements
Degree Requirements
To earn their degree, students in the UW Master of Science in Computational Linguistics program complete nine courses and a master’s project, for a total of 43 credits. For the master's project, you can choose either a thesis or a 6- to 10-week internship.
Six of the courses are required and three are electives. Of the required courses, two are linguistics courses and the other four focus on natural language processing.
Required Courses
- LING 550: Introduction to Linguistic Phonetics
- LING 566: Introduction to Syntax for Computational Linguistics
- LING 570: Shallow Processing Techniques for Natural Language Processing
- LING 571: Deep Processing Techniques for Natural Language Processing
- LING 572: Advanced Statistical Methods in Natural Language Processing
- LING 573: Language Processing Systems & Applications
Elective Courses
- One 400- or 500-level linguistics course, such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics or sociolinguistics
- One elective course in computational linguistics
- One additional course in computational linguistics or a related area
Orientation and Industry Talks
Beyond their coursework, students also are expected to attend an orientation at the start of the program and periodic industry talks.
Held on the UW Seattle campus, the two-day orientation is designed to give you an overview of the program and contextualize the coursework.
The talks are a year-long series by professional computational linguists on product- and research-focused topics. The orientation and talks are broadcast online for students who cannot attend in person.