We are currently offering remote and limited in-person services. Please visit WCOnline to schedule a consultation. If you need additional assistance, please contact our Lead Consultant or GWC Coordinator Sarah Ceja. 

We offer free writing consultations to all UCR postdocs and enrolled graduate students who are not in certificate-only programs. You can make an appointment with us. We also offer responsive, by-request programming for departments and graduate student groups across the UCR campus.

We reserve the right to restrict future access to the Graduate Writing Center in cases where our policies have been violated.

We provide assistance for writing in any academic genre during any stage of the writing process. Need help drafting your seminar paper or writing an abstract? Want to distinguish your fellowship application, CV, cover letter, or online professional profile? Does your journal article need polishing before submission? Make an appointment today!

No. We are not an editing and proofreading service. We may provide some general feedback on grammar and syntax where requested. However, our consultants are primarily trained in writing pedagogy work with graduate students and postdocs to help identify areas for improvement and understand the genre-specific conventions of different academic writing endeavors.

Appointments are either 30 or 50 minutes in length. You may book one appointment per day and two appointments per week.

As much or as little as you’ve got: a draft, an outline, your ideas. It’s especially helpful to bring instructions or guidelines for an assignment or application. Please create a document of the material you are working on to share with your consultant during your remote appointment. 

Please save the Zoom link for your appointment ahead of time by checking your booking on WCOnline and be ready to join it when your appointment starts.

No. All reading and consulting will take place only in the allotted 30-minute/50-minute appointment time. As such, for longer pieces of writing, it is advisable to make multiple appointments well in advance of any potential deadlines.

Currently, most appointments are being conducted remotely. All remote appointments are hosted on Zoom. An hour before your appointment, you will receive the Zoom link in your email inbox.  

During busy times of the quarter, we do often become quite booked. However, appointments also frequently become available as others cancel their appointments. While we do not offer walk-in appointments, it is often possible to make an appointment for the same day, as other students often cancel the night before or morning of their appointments. Additionally, there is a waiting list function that will alert you as appointments become available.

No problem. Review or make changes to your appointment by logging into your account. Please note that if you fail to cancel your appointment and do not show up three times in one quarter, you will be unable to use the Graduate Writing Center or any other GradSuccess resource for the balance of the quarter. Cancellations must be made at least two hours before your scheduled appointment time. If you arrive more than 25 minutes late for your appointment, the appointment will be cancelled and counted as a no-show.

Generally, only two people are permitted to attend the same consultation at a time, and both persons must be co-authors on the paper for which the appointment was booked.

We will only look at writing from a single author who is present, or up to two co-authors. If you are co-authoring with faculty, bring in your own materials only, as we do not serve faculty at the Graduate Writing Center. Please refer to the next question for further information on co-authors.

In order to give all graduate students as many opportunities as possible to utilize the Graduate Writing Center, co-authored papers or group projects will be reviewed only twice per week, and the two consultations must be booked by the same person. Multiple consultations booked by multiple members of the same group on the same day will be canceled.