How Important is the GRE Analytical Writing Assessment?
UPDATED IN 2024 FOR THE NEW GRE
The GRE starts off with a 30-minute Analytical Writing (AW) section. How much should you worry about this portion of the GRE?
To some extent, the answer depends on which graduate program you’re hoping to attend. For the most part, though, the GRE essay isn’t that important for grad school admissions, and there’s rarely any need to spend more than a token amount of time preparing for the GRE AW section. Here’s why.
WHY MBA PROGRAMS BARELY CARE ABOUT THE GRE ESSAY
If you’re taking the GRE to get into an MBA program, don’t worry about your GRE AW score.
Let’s start with the biggest reason why MBA programs care so deeply about test scores in the first place: rankings. Unfortunately, some MBA rankings schemes penalize b-schools with low average test scores, so admissions committees are forced to obsess over your GMAT or GRE composite results.
The GRE AW section has absolutely nothing to do with your composite score, and it therefore has no impact on MBA rankings. So most schools don’t really give a crap about it. Sure, it might be nice to fill MBA programs with excellent writers, but that’s far from the front of business schools’ minds.
To be fair, it’s probably not a good idea to completely embarrass yourself on the GRE AW section, but a solid-but-imperfect AWA score of, say, 4.0 almost certainly won’t keep you out of Stanford or Harvard. MBA admissions committees might start to wonder if your AW score is below 3.5, but I see absolutely no reason to worry if your score is reasonably high. After all, MBA programs are looking for business leaders with decent communication skills, not Nobel Prize-winning novelists.
So what does it take to earn a "reasonably high" AW score? Not much, really. I've seen some legitimately terrible writers earn scores of 4.5 or 5. They took advantage of the fact that even the essay-graders don’t read your work all that carefully.
OTHER GRADUATE PROGRAMS AND THE GRE ESSAY SECTION
Most graduate programs don’t care about your GRE AW score – but it’s worthwhile to check, just in case.
Just like MBA programs, non-MBA programs aren’t incentivized to put much emphasis on your GRE AW score. This is even more true for quant-based graduate fields such as physics or engineering, which will care much more about your GRE quant score or GRE subject test score than your GRE essay score.
That said, some more writing-heavy programs may indeed care about your GRE essay score. For example, the Stanford Political Science PhD program requires the GRE and reports an average GRE AW score of 5.5. This is pretty rare, though – most programs either don’t report their GRE AW score or have a pretty mediocre average score.
The best way to determine whether your target program cares about the GRE AW score is to check out the class profile for students who have been admitted in previous years. Aim to score at or above the median AW score for your program.
SHOULD NON-NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS PAY MORE ATTENTION TO THEIR GRE AW SCORE?
Most programs will rely on other data, such as the GRE Verbal Reasoning score and the TOEFL or TOEIC exam, to assess ESL candidates. So while you want to avoid a particularly low score, there’s not much pressure to achieve an excellent score on the GRE AW section for non-native speakers.
This puts you in the same boat as native English speakers: aim for a solid GRE AW score, but don’t worry about perfection.
HOW GRE AW GRADING WORKS
As you may already know, GRE AW essays are graded both by a computer and by a human; if there's a discrepancy between the two scores, then an additional human reads the essay. Obviously, the computer's exact scoring system isn’t publicly available, but we’re convinced that the program primarily looks for structure using basic keyword algorithms.
From there, it probably counts things like the average number of words per sentence and the average number of letters per word, and then it checks for grammar, usage, variety of words used, and perhaps spelling. I suspect very strongly that a reasonable essay structure is the most important part of the AWA scoring system; spelling might not even count at all. (Again, I've seen some absolutely horrid spellers get really good scores.)
The "human" is ultimately looking for the same things as the computer when she grades a GRE AW essay: structure, clarity, correctness, richness of language, and so on. But this human probably doesn't actually read your GRE essays any more closely than the computer.
Again, imagine that you're the poor slob who gets paid $20-30/hour to read bazillions of these AW essays, most of which are tragically bereft of interesting content. Are you going to read every single word? Hell no. You'll skim the introduction, maybe read the first sentence of each paragraph, and then maybe skim the conclusion. (And if anybody asks, you'll surely claim that you read every single word with great care.)
So you don’t necessarily need to exert tons of effort to get a solid GRE AW score.
HOW TO GET A DECENT GRE AW SCORE… WITH MINIMAL EFFORT
When I wrote about the people who read (or skim) your MBA essays, I claimed that you should strive to make your application essays interesting. You want admissions committees to read your application carefully and enthusiastically, right?
For the AW section, you don't necessarily care if the human grader (or the GRE computer) actually reads your essay carefully. You just want to earn a decent score, without exerting too much effort. If you can conserve energy during the GRE AW section, you'll be much sharper when you battle the (far more important) quant and verbal sections that follow.
So you’ll want to focus on structure when you write your GRE essay, even if that means that you produce an essay that would, under normal circumstances, seem like a crappy, contrived piece of writing. Don't beat around the bush: every paragraph should start by clearly stating the main point of the paragraph. The entire GRE AW essay should start with a crystal-clear thesis statement. Somebody should be able to read the first sentence of each paragraph, and still basically understand the entire essay.
Just make sure that you leave a few minutes to proofread your AW essay, simply to avoid committing any egregious grammar, usage, and spelling errors. If this means that you don't write a terribly long essay, that's fine – quality matters more than quantity.
Honestly, it's almost that simple. If you lay out your argument in a completely clear, five-paragraph format, you'll be in good shape, especially if your writing mechanics (grammar, usage, etc.) are fundamentally sound.
You might ultimately write an essay that is about as much fun to read as a phone book. But fun isn't really the point of the GRE, is it?