Become an Undergraduate Peer Tutor

Do you love writing? Are you interested in helping others during their writing process? Please join us as a peer tutor.

Note:  This position is intended for current undergraduate students.  Graduate students may apply for the Graduate Writing Fellowship.

Tutor Requirements

Applicants must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.3 or higher, a desire to serve others and a willingness to devote the time necessary to develop the skills needed to work at The Writing Center.

We require at least a sophomore status to apply.

Applicants do not need to be English majors or minors. We encourage students with a wide variety of interests to apply, so long as they also have an interest in developing their own and their peers’ writing.

Please note that this is an undergraduate position.

Apply to Be a Peer Tutor

To apply to The Writing Center, complete the application form.

The application requires the names and contact information of two faculty references. Your references need not write a letter of recommendation at this time. We will contact them ourselves to solicit their input. At least one of the references should know your writing well.

Select two writing samples to submit along with your application. At least one of the samples should be a piece of academic writing done for a course at Washington University in St. Louis. The other may be a piece of creative writing or another academic piece. Choose samples that you feel reflect the best writing you have done to date.

The application deadline is October 21.  Interviews will take place in late-October, and those selected for training will be notified by early November.

Peer Tutor Training

Selected applicants must register for the training seminar for peer tutors held in the spring semester (L13 310 or L13 328). The seminar covers the theory and practice of one-on-one peer tutoring, asks students to reflect upon their own writing process and their development (to date) as writers, exposes students to various genres of writing and situations they may encounter as peer tutors, and reviews a number of useful tutoring and writing strategies. Students will also observe/shadow tutors working in The Writing Center. Eventually, they will work with real students while being observed during internship hours.