A study was conducted to investigate the relationship between the intellectual maturity of college students and evidence of rhetorical maturity in their writing--specifically, why some students write better than others, since general language abilities cannot account for all the differences between good and poor writing. By focusing on college students, who presumably have the necessary preliminary tools to write, the differences in their rhetorical maturity with respect to writing competence and context could be examined. Seventy student essays were evaluated on three independent measures: W. G. Perry's scale of intellectual development, P. G. Diederich's scale of writing competence, and a measure of audience awareness based on the writer's constructed context. Results of the study suggest that aspects of intellectual development described by Perry's theory (critical thinking, questioning assumptions, and drawing conclusions) are significantly related to the quality of student writing. Results also indicate that levels of cognitive development among college students have a statistically significant relationship to both writing competence and constructed context. (Author/DF)