Sample Scored Essays

Two to three ECC faculty/staff read and score each essay giving it a single, holistic score. In holistic scoring, essays aren’t rated low solely for having many mechanical errors. Likewise, they aren’t rated high just because they are well organized. While those factors matter, the reader also considers the overall impression of the student’s writing. The score is then assigned to reflect that overall impression.

Your essay will be assigned one of the following holistic scores based on the criteria listed. Here are three anonymous student papers on discontinued topics, along with an analysis of their strengths and weaknesses. There are many ways of obtaining a particular score, so these should not be taken as templates or models to follow. Yet, they provide some concrete examples of the ways that the scoring criteria are applied in practice.