Demonstrative "this" is worthy to investigate because of the role of "this" as a common cohesive device in academic writing. This study attempted to find out the variables underlying the realization of demonstrative "this" in graduate-student writing of Semarang State University, Indonesia. The data of the study were collected by asking three groups of students (first semester, second semester, third semester students) to write an essay. The collected data were analyzed by identifying, classifying, calculating, and interpreting. Interviewing to several students was also done to find out the reasons underlying the use of attended and unattended "this". Comparing the research results to those of the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Paper (MICUSP) as proficient graduate-student writing was done in order to know the position of graduate-student writing of Semarang State University in reference to MICUSP. The conclusion of the research results is that most occurrences of demonstrative "this" are attended and these occurrences are stable across levels, similar to those in MICUSP. The reasons underlying the usage are to create unity, to build text and context relationship, to keep theme-rheme structure, to have variation. And the choice of using attended "this" or unattended "this" can be explained as a choice of maxim of manner or maxim of quantity proposed by Grice. It is suggested that a writing teacher review the theory how to write such as cohesion, unity, theme-rheme pattern in writing class since this will facilitate the writing process.