Metacognition emphasizes an awareness and understanding of one's thoughts and cognitive processes, along with management of cognition through multiple strategies, including organizing, monitoring, and adapting. Before students can truly become effective writers, they must develop an appreciation for the amount of planning, organization, and revision that a writing assignment requires. In order to improve student writing, the "exam autopsy" approach--an integrated post-exam assessment model that draws upon self-assessment, peer review, and instructor feedback--was modified to include metacognitive components for use with essay exams and writing assignments. The current study employed a mixed-methods design with a quasi-experimental, nonequivalent group component across four institutions over 2 semesters, with the fall semester classes (T1) functioning as the control group and the spring semester classes (T2) functioning as the experimental group. During the spring semester of each class, the modified version of the exam autopsy process (EA 2.0) was used between two submissions of student writing (either essay exams or drafts of papers). Students who used the process in lower division classes had significantly higher scores than the control group, but not in upper division classes. Qualitative data analysis reveals some of the reasons behind the observable improvements (or lack thereof) in student writing. These reasons, as well as possible future implications for both teaching and research, are discussed in this article.