In this article, the authors report on an assessment project they recently conducted at their open admissions community college to assess student work at the end of the basic writing sequence. The authors' focus for this project was on the way students used essay structure. They gathered artifacts from students who were deemed "ready" by their instructors to transition from the basic writing program to mainstream college-level curriculum. The reason they conduct outcomes assessment is to improve instruction and curriculum (often on the programmatic level), and they did, indeed, find a great deal that they wanted to improve--in terms of the basic writing curriculum and also in terms of student outcomes. This article concludes with the authors' list of recommendations for improving their institution's basic writing curriculum.