Abstract: A computer-implemented system for predicting a grade, score or other class value for an essay receives a corpus of training essays, wherein each essay is a response to a common prompt. For each training essay, the system receives a class value and extracts feature values for each of a group of features. The system then uses the information learned from the training essays to build a model by assigning a probability to each of various combinations of the class values and feature values. When the system then receives a candidate essay, it extracts a set of the feature values from the candidate essay and applies the model to the feature values extracted from the candidate essay to determine a probable class value for the candidate essay.