Students will be better equipped for college writing if they know how and by what standards their writing will be judged during their undergraduate years. At the college level, measures of writing skills serve the important functions of admission, placement, course equivalency, junior status, exit from courses, or barriers to graduation. Placement testing in writing is the first form of outcomes assessment colleges undertake when students arrive on campus. The State University of New York at Brockport, among many other colleges, has developed criteria that are applied to writing samples to confirm student placement. More and more colleges are looking not only for what students write but how they write it. How well students engage in the writing process can be approximated by building revision into the single essay exam or by evaluating students' work by portfolio. The traditional and most common form of end-of-course evaluation is the single final or exit exam. However, an increasingly popular option for end-of-course student writing evaluation that takes into account the writing process is the portfolio. Many colleges are implementing writing assessment at the upper college level, often using portfolios, to evaluate knowledge of, and thinking skills in, the student's chosen field and to confirm the student's graduation status. In general, writing specialists look for fluency, the quality and quantity of detail, the complexity of ideas, organization, and correctness in students' writing samples. (Three charts presenting scoring criteria and aspects of the writing process are included.) (RS)