Next Friday, May 15, at 4:00 p.m., the Writing Portfolio is due for all on-campus members of the Class of 2028. The portfolio is one of Carleton’s graduation requirements, serving as a check-in to ensure that all Carleton students are able to meet or surpass several benchmarks of academic writing.
Sophomores participating in an Off-Campus Study program (OCS) this term were required to submit their portfolios prior to going abroad. Deadlines are different for transfer students: junior transfers are required to submit when they declare their major, and sophomore transfers have their deadline during their first term at Carleton.
For some students, a visit to the Writing Center is essential prior to submitting their portfolio.
As of this week, a total of “14 students have scheduled appointments to work on the portfolio,” said Melanie Cashin, the Director for the Academic Support Center. “Six of those [students] have visited more than once.”
Students are encouraged to make their own appointments, but the Writing Center also offers specialized workshops for sophomores working on the requirement. Cashin and Kristen Vogel, Assistant Director of the Writing Center, are also available for one-on-one meetings.
“We’ve also had 9 students attend our workshops,” Cashin said, “and [a] handful of students schedule meetings with me and [with] Kristen.”
In addition to working with Cashin and Vogel, students can work with student consultants for the Writing Center, such as Selina Lu ’28, who is currently working on the portfolio herself.
“When I was a freshman, I was aware of [the Writing Portfolio], but I thought that, because I was going to be going to the humanities, I would be fine,” Lu said. “But now that I’m working on it, I’ve realized that, because I took so many English classes, I really just wrote all English papers — so I’m having trouble finding a third paper in a different discipline.”
Submitting papers from courses in at least three different departments is one of the requirements of the Writing Portfolio. Additionally, students cannot submit more than one paper from the same class, such as their A&I. Both requirements guarantee that students have practiced writing in multiple classes and disciplines. At the same time, these restrictions can make the Writing Portfolio requirement surprisingly challenging, especially for students who have not taken many writing-centric courses or who have taken many classes in the same department, such as Lu.
Within the three to five writing samples that students are required to submit, at least one must be thesis-driven, and another must use multiple sources with correctly formatted citations.
“[It’s important to] include as many thesis-driven argument pieces, and as many pieces with citations as you can,” said Vogel.
Vogel went on to highlight how papers from classes in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), such as lab reports, can also count for the thesis-driven requirement, saying that students should “include how something like [a lab report] does have an argument.”
In addition to advising students on what pieces can and should be included for the portfolio, Vogel, the Writing Center staff and student consultants can help sophomores revise their pieces, check citations and work on their reflective essay.
The Reflective essay is typically the only ‘new’ material that must be created specifically for the Writing Portfolio. This 750–1000 word essay must focus on a student’s personal growth in academic writing in order to contextualize the writing samples chosen for the portfolio.
“Don’t do the reflection at the last minute,” said Vogel. “It’s the first thing that your readers will read.”
Vogel also advised that students should “include your best writing, which seems obvious, but sometimes people… want to show how they’ve grown,” said Vogel. “But it’s best to include the strongest pieces that you have… and feel comfortable to revise older pieces to match your current level of writing.”
Lu emphasized how the reflective essay, while an important part of the Writing Portfolio, is still only a portion of the requirement and does not count toward a student’s final score.
“It’s not as big of a project as some people have in their heads that it is, especially if your essays are already in a good place,” said Lu. “The reflective essay is not a big thing; the majority of your work is the writing that you’ve already done.”
In mid-August, Writing Portfolios that were submitted this spring will receive their final score. This decision is made by a volunteer panel of about 30 Carleton faculty members and instructional staff, who award each portfolio a score of “Exemplary,” “Pass,” or “Not Yet.”. About 6-10% of students receive an “Exemplary” rating, meaning that they have surpassed the required benchmarks. A roughly equivalent number of students receive a “Not Yet,” meaning that they must work with the Writing Center staff on the areas where they need the most improvement until they reach the score of “Pass.”
“Options [for students who receive a ‘Not Yet’] include meeting with writing center staff to work on specific writing skills, joining the Term-Long Program, attending writing workshops, taking another WR course and/or submitting more writing for review,” Cashin said. “Our goal is to ensure each student feels comfortable with the skill areas that faculty noted when assigning the portfolio a ‘Not Yet.’”
While the Writing Portfolio has been a part of Carleton’s method for student assessment for over two decades, the requirement has changed over the years. It was changed most recently in the Winter Term of the 2024-25 school year, when several portfolio requirements were removed or revised.
Prior to last winter, the Writing Portfolio had six requirements that a student’s portfolio had to demonstrate competency: observation (an ability to describe sensory impressions), interpretation (of an individual source), analysis (between multiple sources), thesis-driven argumentation, use of sources and use of Standard Written English.
While the requirements for “thesis-driven argumentation” and “use of sources” have remained similar in the current Writing Portfolio requirements, “interpretation” and “analysis” have since been combined, and the “observation” requirement was completely removed.
“[The changes were] meant to make it less confusing about what met each requirement,” said Vogel. “It was about figuring out what are the most important things that students need to know before we can say that they have met the writing goal of Carleton.”
The requirement for “use of Standard Written English” has also been switched for a language requirement. As the volunteer committee may not have readers fluent in every language, students are required to submit at least three pieces in English that fulfill the content requirements of thesis-based writing with sources, but they are welcome to submit a non-English piece for their 4th or 5th paper.
Creative writing pieces and collaboratively written pieces are also allowed (though writers have to identify which part of the paper they authored), but students are encouraged to include two to three non-creative samples that were written individually as well.
In addition to meeting one-on-one with sophomores who are still working on their Writing Portfolio, the Writing Center also hosts drop-in sessions, where consultants will be available to help answer questions, according to Lu. The next drop-in session will be on Tuesday, May 12, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. in the East Wing of 4th Libe.
