A writing competency exam has been developed at a Vermont state college as a uniform method of judging attainment of a specified minimum standard for writing. The test was designed to meet four primary criteria: to judge student ability to create discourse, to yield specific evaluative information, to involve all academic divisions in test design and evaluation, and to serve as a diagnostic tool. The exam was designed to assess basic writing skills and combines a standard essay format of approximately 500 words on one of four pilot-tested questions with an editing passage that requires students to find and correct certain grammatical errors. Limitations of the exam are that it is not a comprehensive measure of a student's writing skills and that it evaluates those skills in an artificial setting. Advantages are that it underscores the importance that the entire college places on writing, offers students the opportunity to rewrite the exam, and encourages all faculty to share the responsibility for improving student writing skills. (Appended are the policies and procedures of the writing exam, samples of essay questions, rhetorical criteria, essays used as rating guides, and an analytic scoring guide.) (AEA)