Should I be worried by low analytical writing score on GRE?

Graduate School
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<p>most schools don’t care what your analytical writing score is, as long as it’s above 4.0. if the program cares about your ability to write, they ask you for writing samples and base their opinion on your ability on that sample, not the AW score. if the program doesn’t care about your ability to write, they don’t really care about the AW score either.</p>

<p>anything below 4.0 tends to send up some red flags about literacy levels. you won’t get something in the 3s or below unless you’re writing things like “i am a undergrad student.” but 4.0-6.0 is fine. if anything, i’ve heard stories about humanities programs looking at 6.0 AW scores with some skepticism because the best essays tend to receive 5.0 or 5.5 scores.</p>

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<p>Hey everyone,</p>

<p>I took the GRE like a month ago and scored a 500/V, 520/Q and i just received a full report on my GRE scores. To my surprise they gave me a 4.0 on AW which sucks immensely coz i had taken prep courses during which my grades on the AW section fluctuated from a 4.75 to a flat 5.0.
I’m an international student(Greece) and i’ve graduated from the English Faculty of the National University of Athens. I didn’t really care about the AW and I guess i was overly confident about it coz 1 thing i’m good at is definitely writing. I was taken by surprise when i saw that score coz i was damn sure i would get like a 4.75 worst case scenario. I’m interested in pursuing a masters in Public Relations and Corporate Communication at colleges such as Syracuse, Boston University, University of Florida, Fairleigh Dickinson, Barry etc.
What are my chances?
And most importantly, u think i should sit 4 that crappy exam again?</p>

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<p>I trust you didn’t use words like “coz” in the actual test?</p>

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<p>hahhaha
of course not!
And the weird thing is i doublechecked those essays 4 any misspellings, spaces after commas and stuff!
I feel kinda put off now and i certainly think that’s gonna affect the way they see my application.
Let’s hope that they’'ll take the fact that i’ve graduated from an english department into consideration because otherwise i’m kinda doomed…</p>

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<p>I am a journalist/editor of a magazine. I got a 4 (41st percentile) on the AW and for some reason, the test date is wrong on my score report. In addition, I received a letter from ETS that my verbal section didnt give me the right distribution of questions, so I am being offered a free retest of just the verbal.
Quant: 690 (69th percentile)
Verbal: 640 (92nd percentile)</p>

<p>The funny thing: my older sister, who was a math major and works in finance has a 5.5 on the AW. All my life I have been a better writer than her and gotten better writing scores (i.e. I got a 770 on my SAT II for writing).</p>

<p>Either, the computer messed up on more than just my verbal section and the test date on my score report and sent me the wrong scores…or the ETS graders don’t like people who actually know how to write.</p>

26

<p>The ETS graders don’t like complexity.</p>

<p>They want to see the old sandwich-style five-paragraph essay that you learned to write in sixth grade: Introduction, Evidence, Evidence, Counterevidence with rebuttal, and Conclusion.</p>

<p>Stick to this, do nothing fancy, punctuate it correctly, use correct grammar and syntax, spell everything correctly, and you’ll get a high mark.</p>

<p>Because of this, many graduate programs see a 4.0 as a sufficient AW score.</p>

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<p>I’m another person with strong writing skills that got a 4.5 on the AW. I got a 710 on the verbal and 770 on the quant.</p>

<p>I asked the admissions director at the Fletcher School (at Tufts) whether the AW score was a problem and she said absolutely not. I think her answer had something to do with the fact that I graduated summa cum laude in English Lit and also won an award for a thesis I wrote.</p>

<p>If you have other solid evidence that you’re a good writer, I honestly don’t think the AW score matters.</p>

<p>I was accepted this year at the Fletcher School, the Georgetown Public Policy Institute and the Maxwell School at Syracuse University (for master’s degrees), each with some form of scholarship. I was rejected from Harvard, Columbia and Princeton but I think this had a lot to do with bad personal statements (the three I got rejected from had earlier deadlines than the other three) and my work experience. I doubt the GREs played much of a role in this.</p>

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<p>Thanks for responding! It’s good to hear it doesn’t have a huge effect…but it still worries me. I am taking Econ classes this summer to supplement my application and I also graduated from one of the best journalism programs in the country cum laude.<br>
In response to Professor X, my essays were formulaic and included many examples and evidence. I took a Kaplan course, so I knew exactly what kind of sandwich they wanted, but I supplemented it with all the right information. As an editor, I had time to review all grammar and spelling as well. It must have been a fluke or someone grading the essays didn’t know some of the historical examples cited and graded me down for feeling inferior.</p>

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<p>Are graduate schools able to see your essay when you send the scores?</p>

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<p>Mathsciencedude: No.</p>

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<p>Here’s another CS student who did very well in high school English classes, including high grades in honors classes, and got a 4.5 in AW. 800 Q/680 V. Got into a top 10 CS school with the score though, so it didn’t hurt me much… though I always try not to talk about my AW score when people ask me about my GRE scores haha…</p>

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<p>Well, I think the AW section is ********. I have been consistently praised for my writing abilities everywhere from 2nd grade all the way through undergrad. It was not uncommon at all for me to be that one annoying student who teachers and professors would “randomly” choose to have read my work aloud. I am not saying that to brag. I am saying it to make the point that the scoring of AW is obviously faulty. My score was 4.0, which is absurd.</p>

<p>It is apparently scored by grad school students, probably based mostly on how they feel at the time of grading. I think they often just give a score based on whether it “looks right” to them after skimming it over. They look at length and the use of “big words” as opposed to actual reasoning and argument. I do not think they carefully look at what people are saying in their compositions. Also, using software to determine “grade level” is stupid. Lots of people can write something extremely long. That doesn’t make it good.</p>

<p>I went for quality when I did the AW section, not quantity. Each essay was four paragraphs for me, a modest length, but I was careful about what I wrote. The quality was something that I could have turned in as a final draft instead of a “rough draft.” Yeah, clearly that approach came back to bite me in the ass. My advice to anyone doing the AW section is just BS til the cows come home. Don’t worry about actually saying something intelligent because it is evident that that isn’t what ETS looks for.</p>

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<p>@math.</p>

<p>I wish they could. I bet it would shed an entirely different light on the scores.</p>

34

<p>The AW section is scored by professors, not grad students.</p>

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<p>5.5 AW, which is apparently 95th percentile. Proper punctuation, grammar, and consistent style will take you most of the way there for the issue piece. Besides that, pretend as if you know what you’re talking about, and use “real evidence” or “personal experience” even if it’s false.</p>

<p>As concerns the analyze an argument section, Gracyk’s explanation of basic fallacies is a good starting point. Learn the various causal fallacies inside and out, and you can’t go wrong. Pay particular attention to biased samples, propter hoc fallacies, and possible indirect causative factors.</p>

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<p>Listen to Thethros. The AW section is as much about critical thinking skills as it is about writing. Many “good” writers fail to properly prepare for this section because they figure that all they need to do is write a coherent and grammatically correct essay. Learn to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of an argument, and then take it from there. The highest scored essays demonstrate nuanced thinking. If you look at the ETS examples of essays and their scores, you’ll see what I mean. </p>

<p>I’ve encountered many college students who think they write well when they don’t – at least, not at the college level. You might be surprised by how many professors complain about the quality of student writing. If your writing and your understanding of what makes good writing has not evolved since high school, then you’ll run into trouble with the AW. In my experience, mediocre (or worse) writers are not adept at transitions, narrative flow, precise vocabulary, and appropriate supporting arguments. </p>

<p>And remember this: flowery writing works against you. Complex thinking can lead to complex sentences, but not the other way around. Nothing is more annoying than to read convoluted sentences that have little content or to encounter incorrect or imprecise word usage.</p>

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<p>i got a 800Q/640V score, but ended up with 3.5 in AW. I knew i wasnt too good in writing, but definitely not THAT bad!!Do i need to retake GRE? And any suggestions regarding the CS grad schools i should apply to with these scores?</p>

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<p>Anyone who worries about and takes personally a bad AW score let me share this with you. I am a professional writer and editor. I was a technical writer for seven years before I became an adjunct college professor over the past five years. I have been published in academic journals and am hired by others to edit and rewrite their papers and books. I’m not bragging, I am just giving you some perspective. </p>

<p>I took the GRE as a formality to apply for a doctoral fellowship and though I was 97th percentile on the rest of the GRE, they gave me a 4.5 on the AW. The flunkies and mindless computer drone that score the AW aren’t looking at your writing ability or how you think. The AW scoring is an assembly line where they churn out results based on the essays’ adherence to a predetermined word list. Technically you can beat the system by learning what words they are looking for and giving the machine what it wants but that would take many, many hours. But that is all the AW section is.</p>

<p>I am not the only person who writes critical thinking papers for a living who has not received a “good” AW score. You should not take it as an assessment of your abilities if you get an AW score lower than your expectations.</p>

<p>Two more reasons not to worry about a low AW score: Very few schools even look at it because admissions committees understand the scores are not reflective of a candidates abilities. You would be hard pressed to find a program that has any requirements for AW scores. Second, as others have pointed out on this thread and others, the only practical use of the AW score is to detect phony SOPs and writing samples, mostly from foreign students. If a committee sees a sterling writing sample but the candidate received a 2.0 AW score, then they know the candidate had someone else write the sample. So unless you received below a 3.0 on the AW, you are okay.</p>

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<p>I have now taken the GRE twice, once in May of this year, and again in July. My May scores on the objective sections pleased me very much: 740V and 730 Q. However, I was extremely disappointed to receive an AW score of 3.5. I later found out from GRE informational websites that being painstaking about perfectly crafting each sentence is not the way to approach the assignment. I had not included enough examples, and also my issue essay was not long enough. However, my argument analysis essay should have gotten a high score.</p>

<p>I recently retook the test with a goal of raising my AW score. During the week of the most recent test, I had some unforeseen stresses and I didn’t sleep well. My quantitative score suffered --dropped to a 670. My ability to solve math problems in a quick fashion is a casualty to sleep loss. My verbal remained high, with a score of 730. I just received my AW writing score, and though I did a bit better than last time (4.0), I am still disappointed. I had conducted copious research to try to find out what they are looking for. I organized my essay for the July test according to suggestions from prep material books, and presented examples relevant to my position. Also, my background in research was particularly well suited to the type of argument-analysis prompt I was given. I wonder if the human grader was even as conversant as I am in that type of research criticism.</p>

<p>I agree with the previous post by ProfGiles. I question whether the AW component of the GRE is a valid type of exercise, conveying accurate information to graduate programs. If a computer is used in scoring, that detracts from the legitimacy of the scoring process. A computer cannot follow a narrative. The human grader only devotes two minutes to each test’s AW section, from what I have read. Such a subjective process seems ill-suited for inclusion in an aptitude test.</p>

<p>As for my background: I attended a very selective liberal arts college as an undergraduate, graduated magna cum laude, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. I won the award for the outstanding graduating senior in my department (Political Science). I have an M.A. in interdisciplinary Social Science, from a mid-level state university, where my average was 4.0. I have received A’s on approximately 95% of all papers I have written in my undergraduate and graduate careers, and never received a grade lower than a B on a writing assignment. My verbal communication skills, written and oral, have been noticed and commended throughout my life. </p>

<p>I do not consider the AW component of the GRE to be a valid measure. A human being, who is attempting to “think like a computer,” and may not even be as capable a writer as myself, is attributing a grade to my writing skills. ProfGiles, I hope you are correct that “very few schools even look at it because admissions committees understand the scores are not reflective of a candidate’s abilities.”</p>

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<p>This website had taken the entire pool of GRE Analytical Writing topics, removed all duplicate topics, and sorted them by how likely they are to appear on your test. Check it out. It’s pretty helpful. </p>

<p>simplygre.■■■■■■■■■■</p>