CSUSB says all its first year writing courses are college level. What's the difference between college level writing and high school writing?

Students who are admitted to CSUSB have successfully met expectations for high school writing. Like most first year students nationwide, incoming CSUSB students take first year composition because writing at the university is different from the writing students do in high school. Think of it this way: writing and thinking are intimately tied as you determine what you will say in a paper, as well as how you will say it, right? If, as you probably expect, the nature of thinking and learning changes as you move from high school to college, then so too will the nature and purposes of writing.

At CSUSB, you will be entering intellectual conversations – about ideas, discoveries, and questions -- already in progress among scholars, researchers, professors, and students. Writing is used as a way of participating in these conversations. As such, university writing is not limited to the five-paragraph essay, the Schaffer essay, the research essay, or the thesis-driven essay. Perhaps the biggest shift you will find is this: the move from argument to inquiry. Yes, academics in some fields do present arguments in their writing. But they all begin with inquiry – by asking questions and considering implications before offering conclusions. This is why first year composition students at CSUSB learn approaches to university writing which may include:

• establishing a meaningful project
• using writing as inquiry
• working closely with other texts
• synthesizing the ideas of others to locate and develop your own
• moving between abstraction and specificity
• distinguishing popular discourses from academic discourses
• evaluating information with respect to its rhetorical and social context.
• revising meaningfully
• editing for rhetorical and stylistic purposes
• developing a vocabulary and strategies for determining how to meet the intellectual and rhetorical demands of different academic contexts for writing.