Composition and Rhetoric (CORE) is a foundation course for all students. In this course, your instructor will assess your writing skills on several specific components—for example, argument, logic, evidence, knowledge, mechanics, and perhaps others. Each component is evaluated against a set of rubrics. Rubrics are statements that define the different levels of sophistication with respect to the various aspects of writing. When your instructors read your work, they evaluate it against a set of rubrics. The purpose of sharing the CORE rubrics with you is to teach you how to self-assess your writing in the same way as your instructor. In this way, you will be able to identify your strengths and weaknesses against the rubrics, and set concrete intellectual goals based on specific features of your compositional skill. This course aims to teach you how to achieve trait-specific excellence in writing. If you want to achieve the compositional skills that your instructors have that lead them to their judgments about your writing, you will increase your chances of success if you understand what they are looking for and why—CORE rubrics enable you to understand what your instructors are looking for in your work and why.