  We present an analysis of the broadband UV/optical properties of z<3.4
quasars matched in the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) General Data Release 1
(GR1) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 3 (SDSS DR3). Of the 6371
DR3 quasars covered by 204 GR1 tiles, 5380 have near-UV detections, while 3034
have both near-UV and far-UV detections using a matching radius of 7". Most of
the DR3 sample quasars are detected in the near-UV until z~1.7, with the
near-UV detection fraction dropping to ~50% by z~2. Statistical tests performed
on the distributions of non-detections indicate that the optically-selected
quasars missed in the UV tend to be optically faint or at high redshift. The
GALEX positions are shown to be consistent with the SDSS astrometry to within
an rms scatter of 0.6-0.7" in each coordinate, and empirically determined
photometric errors from multi-epoch GALEX observations significantly exceed the
Poissonian errors quoted in the GR1 object catalogs. The UV-detected quasars
are well separated from stars in UV/optical color-color space, with the
relative colors suggesting a marginally detected population of reddened objects
due to line of sight absorption or due to dust associated with the quasar. The
resulting rest-frame spectral energy distributions (SEDs) cover ~350-9000A,
where the overall median SED peaks near the Ly-a emission line, as found in
other UV quasar studies. The large sample size allows us to construct median
SEDs in small bins of redshift and luminosity, and we find the median SED
becomes harder at UV wavelengths for quasars with lower continuum luminosity.
Tables containing the results of the matching and the overall median SED are
available in the electronic edition of the journal.
