#GMAT AWA CODE#

(Yes, the actual prompts used on the test.) It would be a waste of time to write, or even outline, essays for each of them, but it is worth your time to scan through them, making sure you understand each one.įocus on quality over quantity: a perfect 250-word essay is better (both for the AWA grader and for admissions officers) than a rough 400-word version. In the back of The GMAT Official Guide, there is a list of all possible essay prompts. Write a practice essay or two, for starters. They don't expect your GMAT essays to be perfect–they know you only have half an hour for each one–but they also don't expect you to read like John Updike in your application essays and like a chimpanzee on your AWA. Plagiarized or ghost-written essays are a problem at every level of admissions, so if the person evaluating your application essays can also see how you wrote during the GMAT, they might notice if there's a big difference. Part of the reason the AWA is included on the GMAT is because some applicants might try to cheat.

It can measure the quality of your vocabulary (as well as relevance to the topic), as well as proper use of transition key words, such as 'however.' I can't imagine it recognizes the great ideas you put in your essay, but it does seem to pick up on the rest.

#GMAT AWA CODE#

I'd love to see the source code of that thing, but in the meantime I'll have to stick with educated guesses. The GMAC reports that the human and the computer differ in a relatively small number of cases, so it's not something to lie awake worrying about. If they disagree by more than a point, another human comes along, separates the brawling human and computer graders, and settles the dispute. Each essay is initially graded by a human and a computer.

Your essays are scored on a scale from 0 to 6 in half-point increments. The second gives you a prompt not unlike the passage in a Critical Reasoning question and asks you to–big surprise!–analyze the argument. The first gives you a general topic, and you are asked to write an essay arguing for one side or the other. The AWA consists of two 30-minute essay questions, the Analysis of Issue and the Analysis of Argument.

The schools you apply to can see your actual essays.

A small amount of effort can translate into a big difference in score.

It's a mistake to forget about it entirely, though: It's true: there's no reason to spend nearly as much time preparing for the AWA as you do for the rest of the test. Heck, it's even relegated to the very back of The GMAT Official Guide. No one (test-takers or business schools) considers it as important as the rest of the test, and it's scored separately from the Quantitative and Verbal parts of the exam. The Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) is the neglected stepchild of the GMAT. Subscribe to GMAT Hacks via RSS or Email.

1: An essay that is fundamentally deficient.You should follow me on Twitter.

0: An essay that is totally illegible or obviously not written on the assigned topic.

While mastery of the conventions of written English factor into scoring, minor errors are expected, and evaluators are trained to be sensitive to examinees whose first language is not English.Įach of the two essays in the Analytical Writing part of the test is graded on a scale of 0 (the minimum) to 6 (the maximum): The second and third readers are humans, who evaluate the quality of the examinee’s ideas and his or her ability to organize, develop, and express ideas with relevant support. The first reader is IntelliMetric, a proprietary computer program developed by Vantage Learning, which analyzes creative writing and syntax of more than 50 linguistic and structural features. If there is more than one point difference, the essays are read by a third reader. If the two scores are within one point of each other, they are averaged. The essay is read by two readers who each mark the essay with a grade from 0-6, in 0.5 point increments with a mean score of 4.1. Each essay must be written within 30 minutes and is scored on a scale of 0-6. In the first, the student must analyze an argument and in the second the student must analyze an issue. The Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) section of the test consists of two essays.

Gmat awa