Studied the relationship between writing skills tested on a relatively brief standardized assessment and some nontest indicators of student writing ability. Results for 2,057 college students show modest correlations between writing assessment essays and the various nontest indicators, with performance on the assessment exhibiting the strongest…

Gathered judgments of 253 minority group students and 268 other college students who took the Graduate Record Examination about essay prompts being considered for use in a graduate writing test. Identified several features that underlie examinee perceptions of essay prompts, especially the extent to which prompts allow examinees to draw on their…

The personal statement as an indicator of writing skill was evaluated by comparing personal statements with standardized essay measures of writing ability for 475 graduate students. Correlations of the essay and the personal statement with nontest indicators of writing skill indicate that the traditional essay was more highly related to nearly all…