The goal of the 1981-82 examination of the Evaluation Scale (ES) of the City University of New York's (CUNY) Writing Skills Assessment Test (WSAT) was to ascertain if the descriptive criteria of the original ES, instituted in 1978, might be refined in the light of CUNY's four years of experience with large-scale testing at a multicampus university. Phase I was an attempt to develop refined descriptive criteria for the scores of 1-6 that comprise the ES. This attempt was successful and resulted in a Refined ES. Phase II sought in a pilot study to test the hypothesis that the Refined ES is a revision of the original ES, not a new document. This hypothesis was supported by the pilot study. Thus, the established standards of the WSAT were not disturbed by the Refined ES, and many benefits were provided. As a result, the Refined ES was adopted for official use within CUNY. Appendices that comprise two-thirds of this report include a sample of the CUNY WSAT, the original ES, materials used by the panel involved in the refinement of the ES, scored student essays for panelists' use (Phase I), panelists' descriptive criteria, the Refined ES, the reader guidelines for holistic scoring (Phase II), and a list of participants in the study. (CMG)