<p>Any advice advice on prepping for the Analytical Writing section of the GE? Any pointers to how it's scored?</p>
<p>Word on the street is that longer essays are generally given higher scores, but other than that it's difficult to predict.</p>
<p>it could possibly be that longer essays get higher scores. i suck at ritingz and i got a 5. i tend to BS a lot and make it sound like i know what the hell i'm talking about when i don't (i.e. the rest of my posts) :) my friend with better grammar/spelling scored lower than me for some reason and this may be it. in reality all i did was aim for structure and left ample time to read over my BS and catch stupid mistakes.</p>
<p>The GRE is not scored in the same way as the SAT. </p>
<p>Without going into details, you should not rely on BS to earn a high score. While the accuracy of the facts quoted in a SAT essay is NOT important to earn a high score, do not expect that luck on the GRE. Declaring that Nixon started the Spanish American War or invaded Mexico won't help you!</p>
<p>Look at the tips offered in some of the review guides... I'm pretty sure I would've bombed it if I didn't read about what the scorers are looking for (i.e. plenty of analytical points, post hoc fallacies, etc.).</p>
<p>From what I remember of my papers (I got a perfect score in AW), they were highly structured using plenty of concrete examples from my own fields (history and English literature). Following that basic outline of an essay that you learned in high school may seem formulaic, but they eat to death and, really, it does help you structure your arguments nicely.</p>
<p>The goal of the Analytical Writing Section on the GRE is not to evaluate spelling, grammar, or vocabulary, but rather, as the name implies, to assess ** analytical skills **. In other words, your score should depend on how well you are able to structure an argument, either arguing in favor of or against a given proposition in a logical and coherent way.</p>
<p>I frequently found that I had nothing to say about the topic.</p>
<p>Get a book and practice a few of the Argument ones. Once you've done three or four of those, they're pretty much all the same. The Kaplan book will give you good ideas as to what types of holes to look for. I also borrowed a book from the library that had sample responses to over 200 actual GRE prompts.</p>
<p>The issue ones are tougher. I found that I didn't often have much knowledge to draw on to use as examples, so I tried to familiarize myself with a few historial events and important people to use as examples in my essays. I read through over 100 prompts (all available on the GRE website) and wrote essays for over 30 of them as practice. Luckily, one of the two prompts on my actual GRE was one that I had practiced beforehand.</p>