college bridge essay rubric

Texas College Bridge

Writing Assignment

Write a multi-paragraph narrative essay about  The Moment that Changed Everything . Your narrative essay should clearly explain: your moment and how you changed as a result of it. The first paragraph will introduce the topic by grabbing the reader’s attention in an interesting way. Remember that your goal is to  show  your moment with vivid details rather than just  telling  the reader what happened. This means the first paragraph could set the scene for your moment, or it could introduce the ideas behind the change you experienced. There are several ways to introduce a personal narrative. Remember, the end result is an exploration of an important moment and its effects on you. The first paragraph then becomes a tool to open the story and hook your reader.

You will need a thesis statement for your narrative. The thesis should clearly state what you have learned or how you have changed as a result of your moment, which is the focus of your narrative. Because this will be an  implied  thesis statement, it will not be included in the final essay. It is important, however, that you write it down now to ensure this central thought guides your narrative writing throughout the process.

The two body paragraphs that follow the introduction need to include main points that develop your moment and response to it. Make sure each paragraph advances the story you are telling, or rather showing. Each paragraph should have a topic sentence that introduces your ideas for that paragraph and offers details to support/prove this point. Each of your paragraphs should offer a separate point and be independent of each other but work together coherently.

As you wrap up your narrative with a concluding paragraph, you should include a sentence at the end of your last paragraph that gives a final, interesting thought on your topic.

The grading rubric below will help you further develop your paper. ** If required, your instructor will provide you with the specific style guide formatting for your essay ( eg. MLA, APA, etc.).

Your narrative essay will be graded using five separate categories: Narrative Element, Implied Thesis Statement, Supporting Ideas, Paragraph Development, and Grammar & Punctuation. Each of these five items will be rated as Proficient, Developing, or Needs Improvement.

Proficient means that you have met the standards of an effective response. Developing means you have partially met the standards of a response, but it needs some revision. Needs Improvement means you did not meet the standards of a response.

You must earn a grade of C or better on this essay, combined with a score of 90 on both Stages in your EdReady study path, to be eligible for an exemption from developmental education courses in accordance with Texas Education Code §51.338(e)(f) for freshman-level reading/writing courses at Texas Institutions of Higher Education that partnered with the school district or an Institution of Higher Education that signed the Texas College Bridge memorandum of understanding.

NARRATIVE ESSAY

                         Copyright ©2020 The NROC Project

TCB Info Card

What is the Texas College Bridge?  

Texas College Bridge is a free online program that has both ELAR and Math college prep courses that allow you to earn a TSI exemption at participating schools.  Students may have already demonstrated readiness in one or both areas through TSI scores, ACT scores , or  SAT scores.  If not, this is a great free opportunity to demonstrate college readiness.  

ELAR Scope & Sequence

Math Scope & Sequence

Essay topic & Rubric

Texas College Bridge Completion Requirements

Students may need to complete ELAR, Math or both subjects of the Texas College Bridge to demonstrate college readiness.  

The ELAR consists of 2 Stages and and an Essay.  Students begin by taking a diagnostic test in Stage 1 to determine pre-existing knowledge.   Students then work through at their own pace until they have reached a 90% mastery level in Stage 1.  Stage 2 will open up at that time.  Students will once again take a diagnostic and then work through stage 2 until they have reached 90% mastery.  Students are also required to complete and submit an essay for their teacher to grade based on this year's provided topic.  Once a student has completed stage 1 and stage 2 with a 90% mastery score for both stages and have passed the essay, they will be  ELAR complete and may obtain their certificate.  

The Math consists of 2 Stages.  Students begin by taking a diagnostic test in Stage 1 to determine pre-exis ti ng knowledge.   Students then work through at their own pace until they have reached a 90% mastery level in Stage 1.  Stage 2 will open up at that time.  Students will once again take a diagnostic and then work through stage 2 until they have reached 90% mastery.  

Once you have completed Math or ELAR you will need to click on your achievements and set up your greenlight locker.  This will allow you to keep a copy of your certificate and share it with colleges and universities that accept the College Bridge.  

24-25 Registration Guide

Texas College Login

Registration Links for Students

Students should only create one account in Texas College Bridge.  If you are taking ELAR only use the ELAR link.  If you are taking Math only use the MATH link.  If you are taking both, please use the link that says Both.  If you have created an account and then learn you need an additional subject, let your teacher know and we can add that for you.  Do not create more than one account.  Do not use your school e-mail.  It will not work once you graduate, and you may need to access records after you graduate.    Once your account has been created and confirmed,  you will will use the Texas College Bridge login.  You will only use the Registration links one time to create your account.  

Click here for the registration guide.    Click the appropriate registration link to get started.  Your teacher should direct you on which one to select.  

List of Schools

Partnering Schools

Click  button to see the latest list of partnering schools.  These schools accept the Texas College Bridge for a TSI exemption for 2 years after completion date.  

Certificate Instructions

TCB Cert Process

How do I get my Certificate? 

Click here to learn how to obtain your certificate of completion by setting up a greenlight locker.   

Share your Certificate

Sharing your Certificate with partnering schools

Click button to watch a video about sharing your certificate.  

Group Summary Report

Student Data Summary Report

Unit Detail (Student Status) Report

Topic Detail (Student Status) Report

Viewing Submitted Essays

Grading the EdReady Essay

Resources for Teachers and Administrators

Click on the button to find instructions on how to run each report.  

Have questions?  E-mail me at [email protected]   or call me at 817-299-6376.  

Teacher Training

Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of achievement in a specific, clear, and objective way. Use rubrics to assess project-based student work including essays, group projects, creative endeavors, and oral presentations.

Rubrics can help instructors communicate expectations to students and assess student work fairly, consistently and efficiently. Rubrics can provide students with informative feedback on their strengths and weaknesses so that they can reflect on their performance and work on areas that need improvement.

How to Get Started

Best practices, moodle how-to guides.

• Workshop Recording (Spring 2024)
• Workshop Registration

Step 1: Analyze the assignment

The first step in the rubric creation process is to analyze the assignment or assessment for which you are creating a rubric. To do this, consider the following questions:

• What is the purpose of the assignment and your feedback? What do you want students to demonstrate through the completion of this assignment (i.e. what are the learning objectives measured by it)? Is it a summative assessment, or will students use the feedback to create an improved product?
• Does the assignment break down into different or smaller tasks? Are these tasks equally important as the main assignment?
• What would an “excellent” assignment look like? An “acceptable” assignment? One that still needs major work?
• How detailed do you want the feedback you give students to be? Do you want/need to give them a grade?

Step 2: Decide what kind of rubric you will use

Types of rubrics: holistic, analytic/descriptive, single-point

Holistic Rubric. A holistic rubric includes all the criteria (such as clarity, organization, mechanics, etc.) to be considered together and included in a single evaluation. With a holistic rubric, the rater or grader assigns a single score based on an overall judgment of the student’s work, using descriptions of each performance level to assign the score.

Advantages of holistic rubrics:

• Can p lace an emphasis on what learners can demonstrate rather than what they cannot
• Save grader time by minimizing the number of evaluations to be made for each student
• Can be used consistently across raters, provided they have all been trained

Disadvantages of holistic rubrics:

• Provide less specific feedback than analytic/descriptive rubrics
• Can be difficult to choose a score when a student’s work is at varying levels across the criteria
• Any weighting of c riteria cannot be indicated in the rubric

Analytic/Descriptive Rubric . An analytic or descriptive rubric often takes the form of a table with the criteria listed in the left column and with levels of performance listed across the top row. Each cell contains a description of what the specified criterion looks like at a given level of performance. Each of the criteria is scored individually.

Advantages of analytic rubrics:

• Provide detailed feedback on areas of strength or weakness
• Each criterion can be weighted to reflect its relative importance

Disadvantages of analytic rubrics:

• More time-consuming to create and use than a holistic rubric
• May not be used consistently across raters unless the cells are well defined
• May result in giving less personalized feedback

Single-Point Rubric . A single-point rubric is breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria, but instead of describing different levels of performance, only the “proficient” level is described. Feedback space is provided for instructors to give individualized comments to help students improve and/or show where they excelled beyond the proficiency descriptors.

Advantages of single-point rubrics:

• Easier to create than an analytic/descriptive rubric
• Perhaps more likely that students will read the descriptors
• Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended
• May removes a focus on the grade/points
• May increase student creativity in project-based assignments

Disadvantage of analytic rubrics: Requires more work for instructors writing feedback

Step 3 (Optional): Look for templates and examples.

You might Google, “Rubric for persuasive essay at the college level” and see if there are any publicly available examples to start from. Ask your colleagues if they have used a rubric for a similar assignment. Some examples are also available at the end of this article. These rubrics can be a great starting point for you, but consider steps 3, 4, and 5 below to ensure that the rubric matches your assignment description, learning objectives and expectations.

Step 4: Define the assignment criteria

Make a list of the knowledge and skills are you measuring with the assignment/assessment Refer to your stated learning objectives, the assignment instructions, past examples of student work, etc. for help.

  Helpful strategies for defining grading criteria:

• Collaborate with co-instructors, teaching assistants, and other colleagues
• Brainstorm and discuss with students
• Can they be observed and measured?
• Are they important and essential?
• Are they distinct from other criteria?
• Are they phrased in precise, unambiguous language?
• Revise the criteria as needed
• Consider whether some are more important than others, and how you will weight them.

Step 5: Design the rating scale

Most ratings scales include between 3 and 5 levels. Consider the following questions when designing your rating scale:

• Given what students are able to demonstrate in this assignment/assessment, what are the possible levels of achievement?
• How many levels would you like to include (more levels means more detailed descriptions)
• Will you use numbers and/or descriptive labels for each level of performance? (for example 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and/or Exceeds expectations, Accomplished, Proficient, Developing, Beginning, etc.)
• Don’t use too many columns, and recognize that some criteria can have more columns that others . The rubric needs to be comprehensible and organized. Pick the right amount of columns so that the criteria flow logically and naturally across levels.

Step 6: Write descriptions for each level of the rating scale

Artificial Intelligence tools like Chat GPT have proven to be useful tools for creating a rubric. You will want to engineer your prompt that you provide the AI assistant to ensure you get what you want. For example, you might provide the assignment description, the criteria you feel are important, and the number of levels of performance you want in your prompt. Use the results as a starting point, and adjust the descriptions as needed.

Building a rubric from scratch

For a single-point rubric , describe what would be considered “proficient,” i.e. B-level work, and provide that description. You might also include suggestions for students outside of the actual rubric about how they might surpass proficient-level work.

For analytic and holistic rubrics , c reate statements of expected performance at each level of the rubric.

• Consider what descriptor is appropriate for each criteria, e.g., presence vs absence, complete vs incomplete, many vs none, major vs minor, consistent vs inconsistent, always vs never. If you have an indicator described in one level, it will need to be described in each level.
• You might start with the top/exemplary level. What does it look like when a student has achieved excellence for each/every criterion? Then, look at the “bottom” level. What does it look like when a student has not achieved the learning goals in any way? Then, complete the in-between levels.
• For an analytic rubric , do this for each particular criterion of the rubric so that every cell in the table is filled. These descriptions help students understand your expectations and their performance in regard to those expectations.

Well-written descriptions:

• Describe observable and measurable behavior
• Use parallel language across the scale
• Indicate the degree to which the standards are met

Step 7: Create your rubric

Create your rubric in a table or spreadsheet in Word, Google Docs, Sheets, etc., and then transfer it by typing it into Moodle. You can also use online tools to create the rubric, but you will still have to type the criteria, indicators, levels, etc., into Moodle. Rubric creators: Rubistar , iRubric

Step 8: Pilot-test your rubric

Prior to implementing your rubric on a live course, obtain feedback from:

• Teacher assistants

Try out your new rubric on a sample of student work. After you pilot-test your rubric, analyze the results to consider its effectiveness and revise accordingly.

• Limit the rubric to a single page for reading and grading ease
• Use parallel language . Use similar language and syntax/wording from column to column. Make sure that the rubric can be easily read from left to right or vice versa.
• Use student-friendly language . Make sure the language is learning-level appropriate. If you use academic language or concepts, you will need to teach those concepts.
• Share and discuss the rubric with your students . Students should understand that the rubric is there to help them learn, reflect, and self-assess. If students use a rubric, they will understand the expectations and their relevance to learning.
• Consider scalability and reusability of rubrics. Create rubric templates that you can alter as needed for multiple assignments.
• Maximize the descriptiveness of your language. Avoid words like “good” and “excellent.” For example, instead of saying, “uses excellent sources,” you might describe what makes a resource excellent so that students will know. You might also consider reducing the reliance on quantity, such as a number of allowable misspelled words. Focus instead, for example, on how distracting any spelling errors are.

Example of an analytic rubric for a final paper

Example of a holistic rubric for a final paper

Single-Point Rubric

More examples:

• Single Point Rubric Template ( variation )
• Analytic Rubric Template make a copy to edit
• A Rubric for Rubrics
• Bank of Online Discussion Rubrics in different formats
• Mathematical Presentations Descriptive Rubric
• Math Proof Assessment Rubric
• Kansas State Sample Rubrics
• Design Single Point Rubric

Technology Tools: Rubrics in Moodle

• Moodle Docs: Rubrics
• Moodle Docs: Grading Guide (use for single-point rubrics)

Tools with rubrics (other than Moodle)

• Google Assignments
• Turnitin Assignments: Rubric or Grading Form

Other resources

• DePaul University (n.d.). Rubrics .
• Gonzalez, J. (2014). Know your terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics . Cult of Pedagogy.
• Goodrich, H. (1996). Understanding rubrics . Teaching for Authentic Student Performance, 54 (4), 14-17. Retrieved from   
• Miller, A. (2012). Tame the beast: tips for designing and using rubrics.
• Ragupathi, K., Lee, A. (2020). Beyond Fairness and Consistency in Grading: The Role of Rubrics in Higher Education. In: Sanger, C., Gleason, N. (eds) Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

Rubric Design

Main navigation, articulating your assessment values.

Reading, commenting on, and then assigning a grade to a piece of student writing requires intense attention and difficult judgment calls. Some faculty dread “the stack.” Students may share the faculty’s dim view of writing assessment, perceiving it as highly subjective. They wonder why one faculty member values evidence and correctness before all else, while another seeks a vaguely defined originality.

Writing rubrics can help address the concerns of both faculty and students by making writing assessment more efficient, consistent, and public. Whether it is called a grading rubric, a grading sheet, or a scoring guide, a writing assignment rubric lists criteria by which the writing is graded.

Why create a writing rubric?

• It makes your tacit rhetorical knowledge explicit
• It articulates community- and discipline-specific standards of excellence
• It links the grade you give the assignment to the criteria
• It can make your grading more efficient, consistent, and fair as you can read and comment with your criteria in mind
• It can help you reverse engineer your course: once you have the rubrics created, you can align your readings, activities, and lectures with the rubrics to set your students up for success
• It can help your students produce writing that you look forward to reading

How to create a writing rubric

Create a rubric at the same time you create the assignment. It will help you explain to the students what your goals are for the assignment.

• Consider your purpose: do you need a rubric that addresses the standards for all the writing in the course? Or do you need to address the writing requirements and standards for just one assignment?  Task-specific rubrics are written to help teachers assess individual assignments or genres, whereas generic rubrics are written to help teachers assess multiple assignments.
• Begin by listing the important qualities of the writing that will be produced in response to a particular assignment. It may be helpful to have several examples of excellent versions of the assignment in front of you: what writing elements do they all have in common? Among other things, these may include features of the argument, such as a main claim or thesis; use and presentation of sources, including visuals; and formatting guidelines such as the requirement of a works cited.
• Then consider how the criteria will be weighted in grading. Perhaps all criteria are equally important, or perhaps there are two or three that all students must achieve to earn a passing grade. Decide what best fits the class and requirements of the assignment.

Consider involving students in Steps 2 and 3. A class session devoted to developing a rubric can provoke many important discussions about the ways the features of the language serve the purpose of the writing. And when students themselves work to describe the writing they are expected to produce, they are more likely to achieve it.

At this point, you will need to decide if you want to create a holistic or an analytic rubric. There is much debate about these two approaches to assessment.

Comparing Holistic and Analytic Rubrics

Holistic scoring .

Holistic scoring aims to rate overall proficiency in a given student writing sample. It is often used in large-scale writing program assessment and impromptu classroom writing for diagnostic purposes.

General tenets to holistic scoring:

• Responding to drafts is part of evaluation
• Responses do not focus on grammar and mechanics during drafting and there is little correction
• Marginal comments are kept to 2-3 per page with summative comments at end
• End commentary attends to students’ overall performance across learning objectives as articulated in the assignment
• Response language aims to foster students’ self-assessment

Holistic rubrics emphasize what students do well and generally increase efficiency; they may also be more valid because scoring includes authentic, personal reaction of the reader. But holistic sores won’t tell a student how they’ve progressed relative to previous assignments and may be rater-dependent, reducing reliability. (For a summary of advantages and disadvantages of holistic scoring, see Becker, 2011, p. 116.)

Here is an example of a partial holistic rubric:

Summary meets all the criteria. The writer understands the article thoroughly. The main points in the article appear in the summary with all main points proportionately developed. The summary should be as comprehensive as possible and should be as comprehensive as possible and should read smoothly, with appropriate transitions between ideas. Sentences should be clear, without vagueness or ambiguity and without grammatical or mechanical errors.

A complete holistic rubric for a research paper (authored by Jonah Willihnganz) can be  downloaded here.

Analytic Scoring

Analytic scoring makes explicit the contribution to the final grade of each element of writing. For example, an instructor may choose to give 30 points for an essay whose ideas are sufficiently complex, that marshals good reasons in support of a thesis, and whose argument is logical; and 20 points for well-constructed sentences and careful copy editing.

General tenets to analytic scoring:

• Reflect emphases in your teaching and communicate the learning goals for the course
• Emphasize student performance across criterion, which are established as central to the assignment in advance, usually on an assignment sheet
• Typically take a quantitative approach, providing a scaled set of points for each criterion
• Make the analytic framework available to students before they write  

Advantages of an analytic rubric include ease of training raters and improved reliability. Meanwhile, writers often can more easily diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of their work. But analytic rubrics can be time-consuming to produce, and raters may judge the writing holistically anyway. Moreover, many readers believe that writing traits cannot be separated. (For a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of analytic scoring, see Becker, 2011, p. 115.)

For example, a partial analytic rubric for a single trait, “addresses a significant issue”:

• Excellent: Elegantly establishes the current problem, why it matters, to whom
• Above Average: Identifies the problem; explains why it matters and to whom
• Competent: Describes topic but relevance unclear or cursory
• Developing: Unclear issue and relevance

A  complete analytic rubric for a research paper can be downloaded here.  In WIM courses, this language should be revised to name specific disciplinary conventions.

Whichever type of rubric you write, your goal is to avoid pushing students into prescriptive formulas and limiting thinking (e.g., “each paragraph has five sentences”). By carefully describing the writing you want to read, you give students a clear target, and, as Ed White puts it, “describe the ongoing work of the class” (75).

Writing rubrics contribute meaningfully to the teaching of writing. Think of them as a coaching aide. In class and in conferences, you can use the language of the rubric to help you move past generic statements about what makes good writing good to statements about what constitutes success on the assignment and in the genre or discourse community. The rubric articulates what you are asking students to produce on the page; once that work is accomplished, you can turn your attention to explaining how students can achieve it.

Works Cited

Becker, Anthony.  “Examining Rubrics Used to Measure Writing Performance in U.S. Intensive English Programs.”   The CATESOL Journal  22.1 (2010/2011):113-30. Web.

White, Edward M.  Teaching and Assessing Writing . Proquest Info and Learning, 1985. Print.

Further Resources

CCCC Committee on Assessment. “Writing Assessment: A Position Statement.” November 2006 (Revised March 2009). Conference on College Composition and Communication. Web.

Gallagher, Chris W. “Assess Locally, Validate Globally: Heuristics for Validating Local Writing Assessments.” Writing Program Administration 34.1 (2010): 10-32. Web.

Huot, Brian.  (Re)Articulating Writing Assessment for Teaching and Learning.  Logan: Utah State UP, 2002. Print.

Kelly-Reilly, Diane, and Peggy O’Neil, eds. Journal of Writing Assessment. Web.

McKee, Heidi A., and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss DeVoss, Eds. Digital Writing Assessment & Evaluation. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2013. Web.

O’Neill, Peggy, Cindy Moore, and Brian Huot.  A Guide to College Writing Assessment . Logan: Utah State UP, 2009. Print.

Sommers, Nancy.  Responding to Student Writers . Macmillan Higher Education, 2013.

Straub, Richard. “Responding, Really Responding to Other Students’ Writing.” The Subject is Writing: Essays by Teachers and Students. Ed. Wendy Bishop. Boynton/Cook, 1999. Web.

White, Edward M., and Cassie A. Wright.  Assigning, Responding, Evaluating: A Writing Teacher’s Guide . 5th ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2015. Print.

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Blog > Common App > The Best College Application Essay Rubric

The Best College Application Essay Rubric

Admissions officer reviewed by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University

Written by Kylie Kistner, MA Former Willamette University Admissions

Key Takeaway

Are your eyes blurry from staring at your college essay for hours on end? It's time to pull out a rubric. Rubrics are scoring tools that can help you identify changes to make before you submit.

If you’re reading this post, you probably have a finished draft of your college essay. Congrats!

Now, you might be wondering: what do I do now?

It’s time to evaluate what you’ve written so you can get to editing.

But evaluating writing is difficult. Different people have different opinions about what a piece of writing should do or look like, so one person may love an essay that another person hates. Unlike disciplines with clearer, more objective solutions to problems (think math or chemistry), writing leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

Even in college admissions, what resonates with one admissions officer may be uninspired to a different one.

But if everyone has different opinions, then how do you know whether what you’ve written is good?

Enter: a rubric.

Rubrics are excellent tools to help you evaluate your writing. They’re those pesky tables that your English teachers have probably stapled to the back of your AP Lit essays.

While rubrics won’t eliminate differences of opinion, they can help you understand how your essay stacks up to a generally agreed-upon set of standardized college essay conventions.

In this post, we break down what a rubric is and how you can use one to score your essay. We also give you some tips for editing after you evaluate your essay.

What is a rubric?

Rubrics can have different layouts. But in general, they are tables that outline the specific criteria that a piece of writing should meet. They often measure factors like organization, theme, grammar, and more.

The table then ranks each of these categories on a numerical scale. A lower score means that the essay needs a lot of improvement in that particular category. A higher score means that the essay excels in that category.

Overall, the point of a rubric is to help you evaluate your own essay in a semi-objective way.

This is important because it gives you guidance about how to proceed with your editing process. Just like you should have a plan before you start drafting, you should also have a plan before you start editing.

Application deadlines will be here before you know it, so being strategic about your editing process will help you use your time efficiently. You’ll know where your essay is weakest, so you can focus most of your effort there. You’ll also know where your essay excels, so you can use those sections to build momentum for the rest of your essay.

Alright—let’s go through the rubric.

College Essay Rubric Breakdown

We developed this rubric to help our Essay Academy students assess their essays. If you’d like to join the ranks of Essay Academy members and get a fuller version of this rubric, check out the Essay Academy program .

But this version is available free for download below. It’s designed specifically for the Common Application, and it lists five categories that all good college essays should excel at.

Thematic Development: What is your essay’s theme, and how well do you develop it?

Meaningful Topic: Is your topic meaningful, deeply personal, and vulnerable?

Strengths: Does your essay convey a core strength?

Structure: How well is your essay organized?

Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation: Is your essay free of errors? Does it demonstrate skill in standard written English?

Attention to each of these categories is necessary to writing a successful college essay.

To help you evaluate how well your essay does in each category, the rubric lays out a ranking system, with 1 being the lowest and 4 being the highest.

Each column of the table shows a numerical rank and a description of what an essay that scores in that category will look like.

1: The essay does not meet the requirements of the category and needs significant improvements.

2: The essay makes an earnest attempt at meeting the requirements of the category, but it still needs improvement.

3: The essay meets the requirements of the category but does not exceed them.

4: The essay exceeds the requirements of the category. It is exemplary.

These measurements apply to each of the five categories.

An essay that deserves a “4” in “Thematic Development,” for example, will “retain clear and prompt-fitting focus that develops a clear, consistent main idea throughout the entire essay.”

Now that we’ve gotten the rubric basics down, let’s talk about how to score your essay.

How to Score Your Essay with a Rubric

For the rubric to be useful, you’ll need to score your essay in each category. That means that you’ll need to re-read your essay and honestly evaluate it.

First, a brief note on critical evaluation is in order. Throughout the writing process, there are times to be critical of yourself and times to be forgiving. Evaluating your essay is a time to be critical. That doesn’t mean tearing yourself down or being too harsh on yourself. It does mean being realistic with yourself and not sugarcoating your evaluation. It’s better for you to be critical now than for an admissions officer to be critical later. The consequences of you being critical will be a better final draft. The consequences of an admissions officer being critical could be a rejection.

This process is a little tedious, so we’ll go step by step.

Step 1: Before you being reading, explore the rubric thoroughly and understand what each of the categories asks you to do. You might also consider reading our guide to writing a college essay to get a more holistic view of what you’re aiming for.

Step 2: Start by thinking about the first four categories (thematic development, meaningful topic, strengths, and structure). These are the biggest categories that will have the most significant impact on the overall makeup of your essay.

Step 3: Re-read your essay with these criteria in mind, and circle your scores on the rubric. Don’t worry about fixing them quite yet.

Step 4: Then think through the final category (grammar, spelling, and punctuation).

Step 5: Re-read your essay again, paying particular attention to these sections. As you go, feel free to note any glaring errors, run-on sentences, or odd word choice you notice.

Step 6: Circle your grammar score on the rubric

You should now have five total scores, one in each category.

Step 7: Take the lowest scores, and that’s where you’ll start your revisions.

Using a Rubric to Edit Your College Essay

Once you’ve evaluated your college essay, it’s time to begin editing.

Make a list of which revisions you want to prioritize first based on your lowest scores. Look at the description for a “4” score in those categories. What do those descriptions list that your essay doesn’t have? Make note of each thing you need to improve.

Then get to editing. It’s a good idea to copy and paste your essay into a new document so you don’t lose any of your original work, just in case you want to recover anything.

Start with the larger issues first—those of theme, meaning, strength, and structure. You’ll want to prioritize the biggest revisions because those will likely affect all parts of your essay. Prioritizing these first will help you avoid doing work that you’ll later delete anyway.

Once you’re done with your revisions, re-score your essay using the rubric. You can even hand your essay and the rubric to a trusted adult to score. If you still have areas of improvement, revise again.

When you’re scoring 3-4 in every category, you’ll know you’re ready to submit.

( Psst—need more editing help? Let's work together .)

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Written by Arthur Russell

Just about every discussion of rubrics begins with a caveat: writing rubrics are not a substitute for writing instruction. Rubrics are tools for communicating grading criteria and assessing student progress. Rubrics take a variety of forms, from grids to checklists , and measure a range of writing tasks, from conceptual design to sentence-level considerations.  

As with any assessment tool, a rubric’s effectiveness is entirely dependent upon its design and its deployment in the classroom. Whatever form rubrics take, the criteria for assessment must be legible to all students—if students cannot decipher our rubrics, they are not useful.  

When effectively integrated with writing instruction, rubrics can help instructors clarify their own expectations for written work, isolate specific elements as targets of instruction, and provide meaningful feedback and coaching to students. Well-designed rubrics will draw program learning outcomes, assignment prompts, course instruction and assessment into alignment. 

Starting Points

Course rubrics vs. assignment rubrics.

Instructors may choose to use a standard rubric for evaluating all written work completed in a course. Course rubrics provide instructors and students a shared language for communicating the values and expectations of written work over the course of an entire semester. Best practices suggest that establishing grading criteria with students well in advance helps instructors compose focused, revision-oriented feedback on drafts and final papers and better coach student writers. When deploying course rubrics in writing-intensive courses, consider using them to guide peer review and self-evaluation processes with students. The more often students work with established criteria, the more likely they are to respond to and incorporate feedback in future projects.

At the same time, not every assignment needs to assess every aspect of the writing process every time. Particularly early in the semester, instructors may develop assignment-specific rubrics that target one or two standards. Prioritizing a specific learning objective or writing process in an assignment rubric allows instructors to concentrate time spent on in-class writing instruction and encourages students to develop targeted aspects of their writing processes.  

Developing Evaluation Criteria

• Establish clear categories. What specific learning objectives (i.e. critical and creative thinking, inquiry and analysis) and writing processes (i.e. summary, synthesis, source analysis, argument and response) are most critical to success for each assignment? 
• Establish observable and measurable criteria of success. For example, consider what counts for “clarity” in written work. For a research paper, clarity might attend to purpose: a successful paper will have a well-defined purpose (thesis, takeaway), integrate and explain evidence to support all claims, and pay careful attention to purpose, context, and audience. 
• Adopt student-friendly language. When using academic terminology and discipline-specific concepts, be sure to define and discuss these concepts with students. When in doubt , VALUE rubrics are excellent models of clearly defined learning objective and distinguishing criteria.  

Sticking Points: Writing Rubrics in the Disciplines  

Even the most carefully planned rubrics are not self-evident. The language we have adopted for writing assessment is itself a potential obstacle to student learning and success . What we count for “clarity” or “accuracy” or “insight” in academic writing, for instance, is likely shaped by our disciplinary expectations and measured by the standards of our respective fields. What counts for “good writing” is more subjective than our rubrics may suggest. Similarly, students arrive in our courses with their own understanding and experiences of academic writing that may or may not be reflected in our assignment prompts. 

Defining the terms for success with students in class and in conference will go a long way  toward bridging these gaps. We might even use rubrics as conversation starters, not only as an occasion to communicate our expectations for written work, but also as an opportunity to demystify the rhetorical contexts of discipline-specific writing with students.

Helpful Resources  

For a short introduction to rubric design, the Creating Rubrics guide developed by Louise Pasternack (2014) for the  Center for Teaching  Excellence and Innovation is an excellent resource.  The step-by-step tutorials developed by North Carolina State University and DePaul Teaching Commons are especially useful for instructors preparing rubrics from scratch.  On the use of rubrics for writing instruction and assignments in particular, Heidi Andrade’s “Teaching with Rubrics: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” provides an instructive overview of the benefits and drawbacks of using rubrics.  For a more in-depth introduction (with sample rubrics), Melzer and Bean’s “Using Rubrics to Develop and Apply Grading Criteria” in  Engaging Ideas  is essential reading. 

Cited and Recommended Sources

• Andrade, Heidi Goodrich. “Teaching with Rubrics: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” College Teaching , vol. 53, no. 1, 2005, pp. 27–30, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27559213  
• Athon, Amanda. “Designing Rubrics to Foster Students’ Diverse Language Backgrounds.” Journal of Basic Writing , vol. 38, No.1, 2019, pp. 78–103, https://doi.org/10.37514/JBW-J.2019.38.1.05  
• Bennett, Cary. “Assessment Rubrics: Thinking inside the Boxes.” Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences , vol. 9, no. 1, 2016, pp. 50–72,  http://www.jstor.org/stable/24718020  
• Broad, Bob. What We Really Value: Beyond Rubrics in Teaching and Assessing Writing . University Press of Colorado, 2003. https://doi-org.proxy1.library.jhu.edu/10.2307/j.ctt46nxvm  
• Melzer, Dan, and John C. Bean. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom . 3rd ed., Jossey-Bass, 2021 (esp. pp. 253-277), https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy1.library.jhu.edu/lib/jhu/detail.action?docID=6632622  
• Pasternack, Louise. “Creating Rubrics,” The Innovative Instructor Blog , Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation, Johns Hopkins University, 21 Nov. 2014.  
• Reynders, G., et al. “Rubrics to assess critical thinking and information processing in undergraduate STEM courses.” International Journal of STEM Education vol. 7, no. 9, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-020-00208-5  
• Turley, Eric D., and Chris W. Gallagher. “On the ‘Uses’ of Rubrics: Reframing the Great Rubric Debate.” The English Journal , vol. 97, no. 4, 2008, pp. 87–92, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30047253  
• Wiggins, Grant. “The Constant Danger of Sacrificing Validity to Reliability: Making Writing Assessment Serve Writers.” Assessing Writing , vol. 1, no. 1, 1994, pp. 129-139, https://doi.org/10.1016/1075-2935(94)90008-6  

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How To Grade Essays From Last Term

• July 19, 2024 20:28

If you need to grade an essay from last term so that your student can receive their certificate, this article will explain how to proceed.

This does NOT apply to students who did not complete their English study paths during the current school year. All students who did not complete their work must start fresh in the new school year.

Teachers must contact support for help: Submit a Support Ticket  

The previous school term in Texas College Bridge closes in late July (the exact date is announced to instructors throughout the latter part of the year) at the start of the annual transition week. Students can no longer access their work and teachers can no longer grade essays after the deadline, because the entire site is shut down for a week and all access to last year's content is rescinded.

After the start of the new term, grading of last year's essays can only be done manually by EdReady support staff.

Any manual essay grades entered after the transition week (typically in early August) will be credited to the student's CURRENT school year, not the previous year.

You MUST follow the steps below to have EdReady staff update the student's grade and issue their certificate.

How To Contact Support

1. Submit a support ticket for assistance with grading a student's essay from last year and getting their certificate generated manually.

Be sure to provide:

• Student's full name.
• Email address registered in Texas College Bridge EdReady.
• Login username (if known).
• Make a clear statement in your support ticket that the student has passed their essay and you would like us to manually enter the passing grade.
• Feel free to include any questions you have.

2. EdReady support will provide you with a copy of the student's essay for offline grading.

3. Work with the student until they achieve a passing essay grade.

4. Reply to your support ticket and let EdReady staff know when the student has earned a "Pass". We will adjust the student's essay grade for last year and issue the certificate manually.

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