The University Writing Center offers four locations for your tutoring session. Please see the Locations page for a listing of these locations. When scheduling your appointment, please be sure to specify the location most convenient to you. Also, be sure to check out our online writing lab (OWL) in the drop-down menu.
Important Writing Center Policies
- You may book up to TWO appointments per week.
- You may book up to FIFTEEN appointments per term (this includes sessions at any of our four physical locations and our virtual location, the Online Writing Lab).
- You may not book back-to-back sessions. The reasoning for this is so that you have time in between your sessions to work on revisions deemed necessary in your first 45 minute session.
- Sessions are 45 minutes and start on the half hour.
- If you are more than ten minutes late for your appointment you lose the exclusive right to that appointment and the session may be given to someone else.
- After TWO MISSED appointments (or what we call "no-shows") you are prohibited from booking further appointments for the current term. If you have scheduled an OWL appointment and have not submitted your writing assignment to owl@gmu.edu in advance of the session you will be counted as a no-show. OWL assignments must be submitted at least TWO hours before the beginning of the appointment.
- After THREE cancellations or TWO no-shows, ESL Opt-In clients will be disenrolled from the program.
- You may schedule appointments for work on your own writing (not the writing of your peers) unless you are working on a group project and all members are present.
- If you are working on a group assignment the tutor can only help with the part of the assignment that you wrote.
- Alumni are allowed up to five appointments per semester and all other Writing Center policies apply.
- Tutors are not permitted to help you with take-home essay exams unless you have written permission from your intstructor, or the instructor has contacted the Writing Center directly.
- Tutors are not permitted to help you with writing that has legal or financial implications or is related to an appeal of a university decision.
- Tutors are prepared to help you with writing personal statements for fellowships, jobs, or graduate school; however, some schools and programs do not permit any outside assistance with the writing of your personal statement. It is the tutee's responsibility to determine whether or not tutoring is permitted. The George Mason University Writing Center is not liable if the tutee violates such a policy.
- If you abuse the scheduling system and/or our policies, you are no longer eligible to receive our services.
Tutoring Services Only
Please remember that the Writing Center is not an editing or proofreading service. We will work with you to improve your own proofreading and editing skills, but we don't simply correct mistakes for you. We want to help you learn to become your own best proof reader and editor.
Important Session Policies
You can book up to two appointments per week, 10 in a semester, including sessions at any of our locations and through OWL. All appointments are made on the half-hour. If you are more than 10 minutes late for your appointment, you lose the exclusive right to that appointment. After two no-shows, you are prohibited from booking any further appointments.
Session Confidentiality
We believe it is very important to build a sense of trust between tutors and clients by respecting the confidentiality of sessions. We also believe that a collaborative relationship between instructors, tutors, and clients is the most conducive to writing improvement.
Registration
You must register before you can schedule your appointment. Registration only takes a few moments. To register, you must be a Mason student, alumni, or faculty. Click here to access the Writing Center scheduler. Once you get there, follow the prompts for first time users.
