In 1972, the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia instituted the Regents' Testing Program (RTP) to provide systemwide information on the status of student competence in reading and writing and to provide a uniform means of identifying those students who fail to attain minimum levels of competence in these areas. Since 1972, some modifications were made in testing policies and procedures as well as test content. Current policy requires that: (1) students enrolled in undergraduate degree programs shall pass the RTP as a requirement for graduation; (2) all students who have taken and not passed the RTP shall take the appropriate nondegree credit courses in remedial reading and/or writing in each quarter of attendance until they have passed all components of the test; (3) having passed the RTP shall not be a condition of transfer to another institution; and (4) students whose mother tongue is other than English may be exempted from taking the RTP provided appropriate local procedures are employed to certify the literary competence of those students. The test itself includes a reading test with 10 passages of varying length, covering subjects from natural science to the arts, and an essay test on the student's test on the student's choice of one of two topics. Each institution is responsible for administering the RTP and sending test materials to the Regents' Testing Office (RTO) for scoring. At the RTO, the reading tests are scored by computer, while the essay tests are graded holistically by three graders. The RTO provides results to the individual colleges, which then report scores to the students. (RO)