how long should the gre essays be

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How Long Should GRE Essays Be?

We take a head first dive into how long the gre essay should be.

Perhaps you’ve been studying for the GRE for weeks and are feeling pretty good about the verbal and quant sections. So finally, you turn your attention to the analytical writing section. You understand what’s being asked of you in terms of the analytical writing task, but the question naturally becomes how long do this essay need to be?  That question is answered in detail below.

About The GRE Essay

In considering the different sections on the GRE, it’s easy to wrap our heads around the Verbal and Quant sections . They’re well defined, objective and quantifiable. You’re presented a question, you analyze and solve it, enter your answer, and move on. These parameters give us comfort .

But the Analytical Writing (AW) section is open-ended and students are given limited information and guidelines in terms of essay length , structure and content. There is no maximum or minimum word count for the essay and no concrete direction on these points.

In addition, Educational Testing Service (ETS) , the administrators of the GRE , have been very reluctant to share any secrets in terms of their preferences on essay length and structure. We know the essays are co-graded by a human and a computer (e-rater), but we don’t know exactly what criteria they’re looking at.

How To Write A GRE Essay

Never fear! We’ve done the hard work for you by collecting and analyzing all the available data we could get our hands on to help you optimize your essay length. Here are the main takeaways:

• Longer is generally better
• 550 to 650 words is ideal
• Scores go up with length, then drop off

Longer is Better

One of the main conclusions from our analysis is that longer essays are generally better. And this makes sense — on the whole, longer essays are more likely to be better reasoned , contain examples and support the points being made. In addition, it gives the writer more opportunity to showcase their writing skills and ability to thoroughly think through a range of issues in less time.

Give Me 600 Words

For whatever reason, the magic number seems to be around 600 . To be more precise, it’s more of a magic “range,” and that window falls between 550 and 650 words . This seems to be the ideal length to most effectively draft an introduction, make and support your points with well-reasoned arguments and examples, and wrap it up with a tidy conclusion.

This also seems to be a result of the nature of GRE essay prompts . Any shorter and your essay lacks reasoning and support; any longer and you risk rambling. Which brings me to the next point.

What Goes Up, Must Come Down

While the data shows that longer is better, that only holds true to a certain point. After 650 words, the average AW score starts to drop off . It’s not a cliff drop-off, but there is a very real and significant decline in average score. Longer is better, but too long and you begin to ramble .

Your sentences turn into run-ons, your reasoned points become clouded and jumbled, and the grader loses interest. This makes sense. Students can’t be reasonably expected in 30 short minutes to read a prompt, analyze it, outline an answer, and draft a well-crafted 800+ word essay with reasoning and examples. There’s just no way .

Quality, Not Just Quantity

Now that you know more is better (up to a point), do not fall into the trap of just thinking that if you slap 600 words on a page you’ll get a decent score. That would be a serious mistake. Like many things in life, quality is equally as important (if not more) as quantity . The content of your essay must still be top notch.

To substantiate this point, check out this in-depth post from prep company Achievable on GRE essays. They took over 1,000 student essays and had them graded by multiple GRE tutors, then crunched the numbers using machine learning to determine what has the biggest impact on a GRE essay score . Their findings are packed with data and some awesome visuals. I highly suggest you check it out.

GRE Writing Tips

Clarity & Reasoning.  Perhaps the most important overarching goal of the AW section is to write a coherent, well-reasoned essay with supporting points and examples. Despite everything said above, this is more important than the length of the essay. After reading the prompt, develop your positions fully and organize the essay coherently. Explain your reasoning for the positions you take. Don’t just make statements and move on, provide clear, well-reasoned arguments to support it.

Structure.  There is nothing that makes an article or essay more unreadable that large blocks of text. People see a large text block and immediately fall half-asleep. Spoon-feed the reader in short, digestible, easy-to-read chunks. Start with a brief introductory paragraph, with four to six short body paragraphs making your points (i.e. the meat) and a short concluding paragraph to summarize everything. Follow this simple formula and you’ll be fine.

Diction & Sentence Variety.  Toss out the thesaurus. You don’t need to use large, fancy words or scientific terminology on the GRE to get a better score . Use intelligent, to-the-point vocabulary. This will help make your writing clear and won’t give your grader pause. Additionally, break up your sentences. Don’t use the same compound sentence time and time again. Mix in short punchy sentences and different sentence structures. This will keep your writing interesting.

Spelling & Grammar.  Although ETS says that small typographical and grammatical errors that do not interfere with the substance of the essay do not affect your score, I’d still recommend steering clear of relying on that assurance. Human graders are just that — human. If you have a couple errors in the first paragraph or two, they will notice this and could likely jade their impression of your writing. Take the time to make sure your spelling and grammar is on point before submitting.

Time Management.  Finally, make the most of your test time by managing it properly. Read the question and specific instructions carefully to ensure your understanding of what is expected in your response. Take a few minutes to plan your response before composing it. Allow for a few minutes at the end to review, proofread and correct any spelling or grammar errors that might be a distraction to the reader.

To sum it up, keep your essay in the 550- to 650-word range , follow the tips above, and you’ll be just fine.

GRE Writing Prompts & Examples

For reference, here is one example of an issue essay question :

“We learn our most valuable lessons in life from struggling with our limitations rather than from enjoying our successes.”

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position.

Writing plan. Before writing, carefully read the issue and the specific instructions that follow it. Think about the issue. If it is broad in scope, narrow it down to something specific. Think about your own feelings and experiences and draw from them. Make notes and develop your position . When writing your response, be sure not to deviate from the question. The key is stay focused and present a cogent argument, yet still infused with reason and experience.

How long should a GRE essay be?

After considering average grades and self-reported data, it appears the ideal length of a GRE essay is 550 to 650 words. Any shorter and you risk the essay being underdeveloped. Any longer and it is likely rambling.

What is the right GRE essay length?

When it comes to the AW section of the GRE, longer is better, until a point. The perfect length of GRE essays is somewhere between 550 and 650 words. But any longer and you may be hurting your score.

GRE Issue Essay: Strategies + 8 Real Student Essays with Scores

The content in this post applies in 2024 to the new, shorter GRE!

When you sit down at the computer on test day, the very first thing you’ll encounter is the GRE AWA Issue essay. For a lot of test-takers, this will feel daunting. But not you! In this article, Magoosh’s experts will guide you through the most important steps in attacking the analyze an issue task. In addition, we’ll take a look at student examples of the GRE “Analyze an Issue” task so that you can understand what gets a high score—and what doesn’t—on the official exam.

Table of Contents

An overview of the gre issue essay.

• Top 5 AWA Issue Strategies

Student GRE Issue Essay Analysis: Prompts, Essays, and Grading Samples

So, what do you need to do for the GRE AWA Issue essay? Well, your goal is to read the prompt, then agree or disagree with the premise—and explain the extent to which you agree or disagree. Think you can’t prepare in advance? You’d be wrong! There are two main things you can do to get ready for the AWA portion of the GRE.

Review the Topic Pool

First, because the prompts are drawn from GRE’s published pool of Issue Essay topics , a bit of research will give you an idea of what to expect in terms of subject matter and presentation. Don’t try memorize all of them! There’s far too many. But! Do spend time browsing the topics and thinking about how to approach them.

Plan of Attack

Second, come up with a plan to navigate the GRE “analyze an issue” task. Not sure where to start? We can help! Here’s an example of a tried and true process for high-scoring essays that you can use to address any Issue task:

• Read the directions carefully
• Brainstorm and outline pros and cons
• Choose a side
• Select a concession point
• Be sure to leave around two minutes for proofreading and editing

Top 5 GRE Analyze an Issue Task Strategies

Now that you have the basics down, let’s take a look at some more detailed strategies you can use to maximize your score on the GRE AWA Issue essay.

1. Be Organized

Even an impassioned, cogent response falls apart if it is not bundled into a proper essay format: An introduction, a few body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

2. Focus Your Paragraphs

The Introduction The Intro paragraph has a very limited purpose: The Intro should only introduce the topic and present a clearly defined thesis statement. The thesis will indicate your position on the issue. Your stance should be just ONE of the many points of view about the topic, not more than one. Often it is easiest for the writer—and the reader—if the last sentence in the Intro is the thesis.

The Body Paragraphs The 2-3 body paragraphs make up the bulk of analyzing the issue and should focus on using examples (ideally one per body paragraph) to develop and support your thesis. Make sure you use appropriate transitions and that your sentences link together cohesively so that by the end of each body paragraph you have persuasively—and clearly—shown how your examples supports your thesis.

The Conclusion The conclusion should be very short. In fact, it should only be a few sentences that recap your thesis and supporting points.

3. Keep It Engaging

Repetitive sentence structure makes for repetitive reading. Vary up the way you write—don’t be afraid to use a colon (or a dash), drop in a semi-colon, and vary up the syntax. A constant stream of noun followed by verb followed by adjective implies that you are a hesitant writer. You don’t want the overall impression your essay leaves on the graders to be a resounding meh .

4. Be Specific

Hypotheticals are fine, if you can use them to convincingly back up your point. However, that’s the tough part; “some people,” “mankind,” or “you” are dull and vague. Let’s say you are addressing this prompt: “Knowledge can sometimes be used for destructive ends.” Stating that “Oppenheimer’s knowledge of nuclear fusion allowed him to create the most destructive weapon the world had ever known” is far more impactful than, “scientists can sometimes use technology to hurt us.”

5. Stay On Topic

Perhaps the most important point (lest you wonder why you received a ‘1’ on your essay) is to keep your essay on topic. Imagine you had to respond to the mock prompt on knowledge I used above. If you begin talking about how technology is destructive because smartphones cause us to become insular… you have totally forgotten to answer the question, “Knowledge can sometimes be used for destructive ends.” Address the most compelling examples, yes—but the most compelling examples that relate directly to your topic!  

Now, it’s time to take a look at how sample essays meet (or fail to meet) the above criteria—and how this affected their scores. All of the following essays were written in response to the GRE Issue prompts , so check them out if you haven’t already, and then come back to analyze some examples!

Note: We’ve formatted the essays so that you can see the prompt and instructions first, then try writing your own response (this is great practice!). Once you’ve done that, click on the “essay and analysis” arrows to view examples of graded student essays and see how yours compare.

GRE Issue Essay Prompt 1: University Requirements

Prompt Universities should require students to take courses only within those fields they are interested in studying. Instructions Write a response in which you discuss your views on the policy and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider the possible consequences of implementing the policy and explain how these consequences shape your position.

Student Essay

Some people believe that universities should put stringent policies in place that require students to take courses only within a chosen field of study, thus harshly limiting the breadth of knowledge that they are able to study. Concentrating on only one field is important in terms of developing expert knowledge and specialization, but it is also crucial that the student hone a well rounded knowledge of the nature of the world so that their field of specialization is accented with courses from outside disciplines as well. It is for this reason that I believe that students should focus their study on a specific field yet also be allowed and encouraged to accent and expand their specialized knowledge by sampling courses from other areas of specialty as well.

Our current globalizing world contains diversity of knowledge, culture and creed that is increasing at a rapid pace and in order to succeed in a world such as this, it is necessary to hone a diverse skill set of knowledge and expertise. Therefore, university policies should encourage students to accent their study of a specific discipline with outside courses that will enhance the breadth of their knowledge about the nature of the world. A student studying medicine, for example, clearly needs to focus the majority of their time on understanding the inner workings of the human body on a scientific level. However, it is also crucial for them to have a more general knowledge of the way in which humans function on an individual or cultural scale (i.e. psychology and anthropology), because effective doctors are not simply capable of diagnosing diseases, but can also interact effectively, with individual and cultural sensitivies, with their patients in order to provide the most well-rounded care. A mathematician who knows only about math and knows nothing about the ancient civilizations whose cultures discovered geography will be ill-suited to make math interesting to his future students or to understand the real world implications of the equations he slaves over daily. A one-dimensional course of study will only serve to foster bias and an uncritical approach to life in such students. Thus, because we live in a world that is multi-faceted, it is important for every specialist to learn a bit about specialities outside of their main discipline in order to augment their understanding of the world at large.

When universities provide a structure of encouragement for their students to augment their specified studies by selecting some courses from outside their discipline, there are some possible consequences, such as the potential for students to change their mind about what they want to focus on. Some may say this is an inefficient use of time and that it will confuse students. However, I would argue that it will foster a wider breadth of knowledge that is ultimately beneficial for any student; a student that started studying biology but then switched to psychology, for example, will always appreciate and pay heed to the importance of our life sciences and will not neglect to consider how the functions of the body may affect someone’s mental health. The existence of knowledge in a wider range of disciplines will only provide the student with more information with which to take charge in a world that is highly complex and rapidly changing all the time, and so allowing them to experiment a little and change their mind once or twice is to their benefit rather than to their detriment.

In conclusion, I disagree that universities should require students to take courses only within their specific, chosen field of study. When students are able to focus their study on one specific topic but then augment it by sampling courses from other disciplines, their knowledge becomes more wide ranging and interdisciplinary, thus providing a better foundation for them to succeed in a rapidly globalizing world. While they may change their minds as to their preferred topic of study one or two times, they will ultimately succeed by having a wide breadth of knowledge that will teach them to approach the world without a subject specific bias. Overall, it is best that universities allow their students to take courses outside of their chosen course of study in order to diversify their pallate of knowledge.

Issue Essay Analysis

This GRE Issue essay starts off with a strong intro that clearly articulates the author’s position. The essay is also very long, and the body paragraphs well developed. In terms of ideas this is a strong—though if slightly limited—essay. It makes a compelling case for interdisciplinary learning. A physician studying anthropology will be more culturally sensitive; a psychologist who studied biology will have a great appreciation for the biological underpinnings of the psyche. The writer justifies this well-roundedness in terms of relevancy: a one-dimensional person will struggle in our complex, globalized world. As well thought out and supported as these points, they are far too similar, and this essay would have benefited from picking another example that argues in favor of allowing students to take courses outside of their majors. Another flaw is the essay doesn’t directly addresses the directions: “should consider the possible consequences of implementing the policy.” Is a world of well-rounded, complex individuals the consequence of allowing students to choose subjects outside of their majors?

Stylistically this essay is not perfect, and I have some minor grumblings.

The ongoing debate about whether a university should require students to take courses only within their fields of study or take extra classes to fulfill graduation requirements is an interesting one. There any many valid arguments to each side and it is not a simple black or white choice when deciding who is right. However, by requiring students to only take courses within their major, it allows for students focus on taking classes that are only applicable to their future careers and allows them to save money in a time where saving money is equally important to a college degree.

In many situations, students will finish high school and go on to college with an idea of what they want to do with their life. For students who are in majors such as engineering or the a science field such as chemistry or biology, it is important to for them to stay on top of all of their course work because of the higher number of courses that they must take in order to fulfill the university requirements for a degree. Many of these students knew before they entered college that this would be the case and gladly accepted that challenge, however by requiring students to take extra general education classes to fulfill their diploma requirements seems counter intuitive to a level of education where students are beginning to focus and narrow in on their future career goals. By forcing say a engineering student to take music theory or British literature just simply to fulfill a general education requirement and having that class conflict with a engineering major course seems to prevent these students from coming to college and fully obtaining their goal as quickly as possible.

The other aspect to consider is the financial aspect. In many of these situations, the students are under pressure to finish their degree as soon as possible because of many state budget cuts to education which limit the number of classes offered with in their major. Not only does this mean extra classes that students must take and thus more money they have to spend because tuition is usually based on a per unit fee, forcing these extra classes upon can have a longer impact if they are forced to stay longer in college than they originally assumed they would. College already charges an extremely large amount to attend and that already does not take into account the other expenses that students have to pay (such as room and board, food, and books), but adding on extra semester, quarters, or even years because a student had to take general education classes instead of strictly major classes is an unfair system to put a student through.

As with any situation though, there are always exceptions to the rule. For one not every student enters college with the same career focus and direction as their peers. Many students will come into college unsure of the direction they want to take and many students who think they know what direction they want to go, end up changing their minds (sometimes multiple times). By requiring students to take classes from a broad range of spectrums, Universities can help students narrow down what career path they may want to follow. Many times students may have a preconceived notion of what a subject may be about and not want to try it, yet by requiring it, they may be able to find themselves in a new class with something they may choose to pursue in the future, something they perhaps never would have considered. There is also something to be said about being able to take higher education classes simply for the benefit of wanting to learn about something that interests you. College allows you to do that and by making it a requirement, it allows students a bigger chance to do that.

Overall though, universities that force students to take upwards of 10-12 general education classes just to fulfill a requirement for their diploma seems unfair. When a student comes into college with a specific end game in site, the universities should not hinder their goals by overloading them with extra requirements and instead focus on helping hem obtain their goals as quickly as possible. The time and financial benefits that could be reaped by not requiring students to take these classes could have a direct impact on the success of all students as well as the future communities they intend to help.

Score: 5.0 This essay covers most of the bases: it offers analysis on both sides of the issue, it throws in a few sentences that address the specific instructions, and it, for the most part, clearly articulates a position. The essay does not wow with thorough analysis, great sentence variety (or indeed any stylistic flourishes). In other words, it gets the job done without making too many missteps.

While I award this essay a ‘5’, there are moments when that score seems shaky. This is not mainly due to the ideas (though the generalizations don’t help: “As with any situation though, there are always exceptions to the rule”); at times the sentences become overloaded and tend to digress.

Word choice could have also been a little more dynamic. “Large”, “bigger”, etc. could be spiced up a little more: “astronomical”, “excessive”, etc.

In addition to making the sentence more readable, and varying up the syntax a little, the essay could have been improved with a little more analysis. I would have like to say more than taking more courses is expensive. Sure, that is a totally valid point, but to spend an entire paragraph on it the overly long first paragraph about students who are not engineers as well.

Additionally, the last body paragraph is confusing: “There is also something to be said about being able to take higher education classes simply for the benefit of wanting to learn about something that interests you. College allows you to do that and by making it a requirement,it allows students a bigger chance to do that.” Is the author implying that colleges shouldn’t require students to take only course in their field (which would go against the main point of the essay)? And by saying that colleges make “it a requirement” that college require students to take courses outside their field?

Had this paragraph been a little clearer and had the writer expanded the scope of the financial issue, this essay—along with a little more dynamic writing and sentence variety—could get at least a definitive ‘5’, if not a ‘5.5’.

Liberal arts colleges and professional schools often debate whether they are required to develop well-rounded individuals. The primary purpose of universities is to establish the ground work for future field experts and specialists, meaning the developing into other fields would detract from the development of specialization. A basic understanding of how to delve into other fields is all that’s necessary.

A college degree in a field suggests that a graduate has the basic understanding of a specialized field, and they may continue to develop into a true expert. At every level of the collegiate process, students have further expansion into their speciality. For instance, science majors start with basic fundamentals that are required for latter learning. They soon go off into their own fields, isolated from the humanities and, often, other science majors. Because students usually have only four years to achieve a set requirement of tested standards in a particular field, universities must push students into their fields quickly. There simply isn’t enough time to truly explore all the possible fields of study at the university level. Exploratory learning shouldn’t be required as it doesn’t serve any purpose when the student won’t continue to explore in those extracurricular fields.

If a student were to only hole themselves away into the fields of physics, they may never truly understand how their physical knowledge relates to society and the social world. Universities tend to have to weigh this “roundedness” against the need to produce future field experts. The outcome is introductory classes that relate to your field, but intertwine with other fields of study, and push students to explore on their own time. These initial exploratory classes would be necessary for any field of study anyway, as creativity and individual pursuit is essential for any expert to further their field’s knowledge.

These exploratory classes are necessary for students to apply their growing expertise, but leaving their fields of study should be done on their own because they can only expand into the elementary levels of other fields within their time restraints at the university level. In this way, students aren’t led by the hand through fields they aren’t interested in, but they would still have the capability to explore their fields if they truly were intrigued. Allowing students to create their own directions, intertwining their interests, creates dynamic individuals who are happier with their degrees and more productive to the world through their specialization.

Universities are meant to develop future experts and specialists in particular fields of study. They should lay the groundwork for students to be able to explore of fields, but not in a way that detracts from their field’s work. At a moment when their time is so precious, students can’t afford to be left behind in their fields as they are forced by curriculum to explore unwanted alternatives.

There are some things about the essay that I like: it brings up interesting ideas relating to the prompt. Do specialists with “roundedness”contribute more to their fields than those specialists who focus only on their fields? The sentence variety makes things flow along nicely, until the middle of the essay, where the author becomes vague. Indeed, at times I’m not sure which side of the prompt the author is arguing.

For example, at the end of the second paragraph he states: “Exploratory learning shouldn’t be required as it doesn’t serve any purpose when the student won’t continue to explore in those extracurricular fields.”

The very next sentence—the first sentence of the third paragraph—says the exact opposite: “If a student were to only hole themselves away into the fields of physics, they may never truly understand how their physical knowledge relates to society and the social world.” Suddenly,the paragraph is arguing against what the previous paragraph stated.

The second to last paragraph is weighed down in abstractions, without a useful specific example to clear things up. Consider the topic sentence: “These exploratory classes are necessary for students to apply their growing expertise, but leaving their fields of study should be done on their own because they can only expand into the elementary levels of other fields within their time restraints at the university level.” There is a lot going on here, and I really had to reread the sentence several times to get what the author was saying. The ETS graders won’t take this much time. And given that the essay has already pulled an about-face in the previous paragraphs, makes this sentence even more obfuscatory.

The conclusion is much clearer than the rest of the essays, and allows me to understand what the essay was trying to say alone.Compare the clarity of this sentence to the one I mentioned in the previous paragraph: “They should lay the ground work for students to be able to explore of fields, but not in a way that detracts from their field’s work.”

So how to grade an essay like this? Strong analytical skills, sophisticated writing, and solid organization….yet, a contradictory—and at times muddled (the clause in the intro, “….meaning the developing into other fields) leads to a confusing essay.

The author states that students should only take classes within their realm of study. Although, students may gain more of a grasp on what they are studying, this requirement fails to take in what students can learn outside of their required classes. To say that students can only take classes within their concentration is occluding them to knowledge that they may learn in other fields of study.

For example, universities typically require students to pick their major, as well as a minor. Some programs may also require students to select a few elective classes as well, so students can establish themselves as more rounded individuals.

Also, taking classes outside of a student’s field of study may help boost the student’s overall GPA. For example, if a student has an in major GPA of 2.5 and an out of major GPA of 3.2, then the overall GPA will increase. However, it could be vice versa as well. If someone isn’t doing that great in their elective classes, it could bring their overall GPA down.

If this policy is implemented, the consequences may be severe. One consequence could be that a student may not be able to graduate on time because they may not have enough credits. Or they may not meet the GPA requirements to graduate because they failed a few classes within their major.

If the university decides that students can only take courses within his or her chosen field of study, then the university may not produce well rounded individuals.

This essay is an example of a 4.0—just barely—that is undeveloped and thus on the short side. It is not an example of a longer, totally one-sided ‘4’ that ignores the directions (notice how the final body paragraph addresses the “consequences” mentioned in the instructions).

What the author has written is an intelligent response to the prompt. She doesn’t simply agree with the prompt, but takes the opposing side, providing support (“To say that students can only take classes within their concentration is occluding them to knowledge that they may learning other fields of study.”). In passing, I should mention that “occlude” is used incorrectly. This is not a major problem, but remember that, if you use GRE words, make sure you know how to use them correctly.

I do not agree with the stated policy to allow students to only take course within their chosen fields of study. Instead I feel that students should should have the opportunity to take course outside of their major for the following reasons.

First, I feel that taken course outside ones major gives students variety, and exposure to experiences or interactions they may not have considered previously. Take for example Lisa, an engineering student who spends countless hours studying. Realizing that she needed a change of place an outlet of some sorts decides to take a modern dance course just for fun. What ultimatly was that Lisa learned to relax which interned helped her study more effectively and perform better in her engineering course.

Then take Monique, a political science major who doesn’t know how to swim. decided to take a swimming course and not only learned to over come her fear, but gained confidence in other other aspects of o her live.

Thirdly, lets consider Jason, a physics major who only took courses in his major. He became such an expert in his field us study, but became increasing socially award because of his inability to converse or relate to his peers.

In the even both Lisa and Monique were not able to take course outside of their major, I fear that they would have succumb to the pressure that sometimes too often over takes students adjusting to university lift. By deviating from their mandatory set of course they found a renew focus and inner strength that they may have never know before. Jason however, didn’t fair as well due to his strict focus in University

University is about diversity and gaining new experience for growth and development. Not being allowed to explore this diversity limits the over experience and potential stunts the education growth and perspective of students

Grammatical errors and spelling mistakes mar the effectiveness of this essay. Specifically, commas are misused (or not used at all), incorrect words are used (“interned”, “award” vs. “awkward”). I think many of these mistakes can be remedied if the student spends some time editing.The point in editing isn’t to catch the nitpicky errors but the glaring ones (of which this essay has many).

Next, the essay has very predictable development: take one-side of the prompt, and then come up with three hypothetical examples to support the point. There is zero analysis. This essay could have been improved and gotten within striking range of a ‘4’, or at least a ‘3.5’, had it simply addressed the instructions: “consider the possible consequences of implementing….” Of course, addressing the grammatical and spelling errors would have helped the essay.

Prompt 2: Lasting Legacy

Prompt Those who see their ideas through, regardless of doubts or criticism others may express, are the ones who tend to leave a lasting legacy. Instructions Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.

A famous author once remarked that “Winners never quit and quitters never win”. People who see their ideas through, however unpragmatic it may be considered by others are the ones who have truly made a difference.

History is replete with examples of people who were perceived as crazy, illogical and even insane by laymen, yet when their ideas were sedulously worked upon, by the creator , day after day, combined with long hours of toil, the result was nothing, short of marvelous.

Lets’s take the example of the Indian freedom struggle fought by Gandhiji on the basis of Satyagraha. It was very difficult for the Britishers to assume that India would be freed one day under the leadership of a loin cloth covered ordinary looking man without the use of weapons or bloodshed. The reason that Indian freedom could be achieved was the unflagging determination of Gandhiji and the uncommon methodology used of winning freedom by peace and not bloodshed.

Looking not far, I can recall the example of Galileo who was reviled and persecuted by the Church authorities for challenging the existing norms that pervaded the society that time. Galileo’s fierce determination , not to give up on his ideas even during harsh criticism paved the way for modern space research.

Another convincing example is of the Wright Brothers. Who would have ever imagined that it is indeed possible to fly like a bird and traverse different parts of the globe. I am sure that the Wright brothers were reviled when they first came up with this idea of developing an aeroplane. But, again today their invention has become a legacy.

Though there are several examples of people winning through odds because of their determination and unflagging spirit and creating noteworthy inventions, there could be times when this may be the cause of much trouble. Consider the doggedness of Hitler.though he was criticised for his heinous atrocitities on the Jews, he still did not stop the atrocities. These are few examples when people with strong determination can create an ill legacy instead of a legacy.

The writing in this essay has a lot of punch and makes reading it easy. However, there is little to no analysis. Like many essays on this prompt, the essay takes an extreme position, and beyond a vague, jumbled mention of Hitler, does not address the instructions: “…you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true.”

As an SAT essay goes—basically you can take a relatively strong position—this is a good essay. Even then, some of the examples lack persuasiveness: “I am sure the Wright brothers were reviled.” Maybe they weren’t (they actually were, somewhat), but to say “you think” vs. “many notable scientists mocked the Wright Brothers notion of human flight” makes the essay far more tentative than it should be.

Also, the examples are very sparse, especially Galileo. Some more development would have perhaps bumped this essay to a ‘4.5’. But without any analysis, and by failing to take into account the other side, this essay gets only a ‘4.’

Although, doubts and criticism expressed regarding a particular by others seem valid at the particular time of inception of time, if the person follows through his idea or well cherished dream, then he may become success in his endeavor and leave a lasting legacy. So, people who see their ideas through, regardless of doubts or criticism others may express, are the ones who tend to leave a lasting legacy.

New ideas takes time to be accepted by general public, and during the time from the inception till the acceptance, the person who invented or discovered that idea, may be criticized or oppressed. Galileo was put into house arrest for his entire life for his heliocentric model of the solar system, because it came in direct conflict with the church’s geocentric model which regarded Galileo’s theory as heresy. Later, Galileo’s model was readily accepted. So, it’s really important that the people should see their ideas through criticism and doubts of others and shouldn’t be daunted, since other people are not connected to the idea or dream or feel the strength of idea in the same way as the person who invented that idea.

If a person doesn’t

This essay struggles from a lack of clarity. The first two sentences are overloaded with words, and so it is difficult for a reader to figure out what the writer is trying to say. Since the essay graders do not have time to figure out what you are trying to say, you will be penalized. Luckily, the thesis is clear—though it is an almost exact rewording of the prompt.

The Galileo example—while expressed in language that is clearer than that found in the intro—isn’t that developed. We learn that he was arrested and confined for heresy. The essay automatically assumes that this is the same as criticism. I would say the church’s actions against Galileo are a little stronger than mere criticism.

What saves this essay from a sub-3.0 is the final sentence, which discriminates between the person with the idea and those who only have an inkling of that idea. However, this idea is not explored in more depth (and doesn’t really connect to the Galileo example). Indeed the essay ends there.

Prompt 3: Risky Action

Prompt People should undertake risky action only after they have carefully considered its consequences. Instructions Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.

People should undertake risky action only after they have carefully considered its consequences.

People should not let their fears prevent them from taking important risks in life. Taking risks is what allows us humans to achieve success, joy and ultimate fulfillment. However, prior to taking any risky action, it is essential that people should carefully consider the consequences.

For example, there are some risky actions that are life-threatening such as skydiving. Of course, before you can begin to skydive, you must learn the basics of this sport. Additionally, by also studying what can go wrong during a skydive, and learning how to react to that scenario, that person will have the knowledge and ability to stay calm and hopefully make better decisions that will allow them to get out of a bad situation rather than falling into a panic.

This also pertains to decisions about money and business. Everyday people are making decisions that are ‘make or break’. For those who really understand the consequences of their actions, they are able to make a wiser decision that may have less of an impact on them if the business or investment deal goes awry. However, but not educating oneself, the consequences of one’s action are likely to be more severe.

Sometimes, knowing the consequences of an action causes fear that will stops us from taking any risky actions. As a result we miss out on potential successes and most of all “joy”. Therefore, by understanding the consequences, one can eliminate feat, learn how to react in a smarter fashion and lead a much more enriching life than if they had never taken those risks at all.

This is a decent skeleton of an essay. But that’s the problem—it is only a skeleton and the ideas need a lot more fleshing out if this essay is to get at least a ‘5’. For instance, in the skydiving example, the writer barely scratches the surface. What are some things that a skydiver could possibly learn to help them make this risky endeavor less risky? How much less risky would they make sky diving? Is there a point where something is so risky that even if we take measures to prevent disaster from happening that something bad could still happen (skydiving in bad weather, or bungee jumping in a country that offers low prices—and also low quality equipment). In calculating risk, shouldn’t we also weigh the payoff. For the skydiving example, is the thrill worth the danger, even if one has taken the necessary precautions and learned proper technique.

A Final Word

Now that you’ve reviewed student samples from across the spectrum of GRE Issue task grades, you’ll have a better sense of what you need to do to get those high scores! More than anything, practice will help you get the score you want on test day. So take a look at the Issue pool and a few more essay examples, pull up a blank document, and get practicing! Best of luck on test day as you master the GRE Issue essay.

Chris graduated from UCLA with a BA in Psychology and has 20 years of experience in the test prep industry. He’s been quoted as a subject expert in many publications, including US News , GMAC , and Business Because .

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49 responses to “GRE Issue Essay: Strategies + 8 Real Student Essays with Scores”

Hello Magoosh team

First of all, thank you for your amazing tips about the issue essay.

But I still have a question about this task “if I write only two paragraphs, and mainly focus on only one side” Can I still get at least 4 points by doing this

Thank you very much for your kindness and time

Hi Supatat,

By “two paragraphs”, do you mean two body paragraphs? You should aim for an introduction, 2 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. In other words, you should have 4 paragraphs. 🙂 As long as you use strong examples and make your point very clear, you should be able to get 4 points on the exam even without a third body paragraph.

When giving examples whilst supporting our point, can we mention an borrowed idea or opinion and elaborate on it in our own words? Let’s say I mention an idea from Yuval Noah Harari and credit him? Will this be considered plagiarism in any way

Hi Akshata,

You can definitely mention an opinion as long as you state the original source. For example, you can say: “According to Yuval Noah Harari, […]” and that would be acceptable. 🙂

Hello Firstly, thank you for this wonderful article. I have a question which is: How can I say a concession point without making any contradictions to previous paragraphs? I hope that my question is clear. Thanks

Hi there! Thank you, we’re glad you found it helpful. 🙂 I’d recommend reading over the example essays in this blog post to see how they handle the concession point. In addition, be sure to check out our blog article 12 Tips to Ace GRE Writing as well.

I have a question regarding where to include the concession point in my essay. Does it receive its own paragraph within the body of the essay, or does each supporting idea have a concession point paired with it? And do you include the concession point in the intro and conclusion as well?

Thanks, Joe

Hi Joe! You can add a third body paragraph that discusses your concession if you have time, but you can also just make a quick concession point, say at the end of your second body paragraph. Just remember that the goal is to use the concession to prove your point. The most common mistake is to spend too much time on the concession, so it can be safer to do less than more. I would not recommend bringing up a concession in the introduction or conclusion. It’s possible, but it’s just too risky. Use your concession to say, “While it may seem that people are distracted by their cell phones, they are actually socializing while looking at their screens. Therefore, technology brings people together.” Something like that is a strong, quick concession, whereas if you spend a paragraph going on and on about how people never talk anymore, you run the risk of arguing for the other side! Hope that helps 🙂

Hi, It is OK to write issue essay from first person perspective?

There is no specific prohibition of the first person and some people do well on the essay and use the first person. But I tend to recommend avoiding first person language, especially “I think” and “in my opinion.” Both of these phrases tend to be redundant because you usually can take these phrases out of the sentence and your sentence will still maintain its meaning and grammar. You can completely avoid the first person and your writing will likely end up with a more sophisticated tone.

If you do use the first person, I’d recommend that you use it once in the introduction paragraph for your thesis, and that is it.

I recommend taking a look at some of the sample essays written on some topics. These are released by ETS, the testmakers, and will give you an excellent idea of what a great, good, and poor essay will look like. You’ll notice that the essays rated 5 and 6 do not have first person language but the other, lower scored essays do.

http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/analytical_writing/issue/sample_responses

I guess I am a lot of thoughts to put on, but facing trouble to make my writing more persuasive. Can you please suggest how i can make my writing more persuasive as to better reflect my thoughts.

In the AWA issue Essay, being persuasive is all about using evidence. Anytime you make a claim, think of the reasons people might doubt that claim. Address all of those most obvious doubts. Also think about any questions people might ask you to get a better idea about what you’re saying in your essay, and why you’re saying it. Always put forth a very complete set of supporting details and argumentative evidence.If you think you won’t have the time or space to complete your argument within the time and pace limits of AWA, then choose a different argument, or find a way to simplify your argument.

One set of directions states to “discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement…” I’m confused by “extent.” Does this mean that ETS simply wants us to take a side either in agreement or disagreement and explain why? Or by “extent” do they mean that it is okay to strongly disagree, or to somewhat agree, etc.

Hi Meredith,

The second option is more accurate–another way to think about “extent” is “degree.” So not only do your agree or disagree, but what are the limitations of that opinion? I hope that helps! 🙂

Can you write in first person on either GRE essays?

There is no specific prohibition of first person and some people do well on the essay and use the first person. But I tend to recommend avoiding first person, especially “I think” and “in my opinion.” Both of these phrases tend to be redundant. You usually can take these phrases out of the sentence and your sentence will still maintain its meaning and grammar. So, you can completely avoid first person and writing in a more sophisticated tone.

If you do use first person, I’d recommend that you use it once in the introduction paragraph for your thesis. And that is it.

I recommend taking a look at some of the sample essays written on some topics . These are released by ETS, the testmakers, and will give you an excellent idea of what a great, good, and poor essay will look like. You’ll notice that a 5 and 6 do not have first person but the other lower scored essays do.

I hope that helps! 🙂

Hi Chris! I have a questions about the intro paragraph/thesis statement. Do you have to include the points you plan on discussing in your body paragraphs in your intro/thesis?

It’s not necessary to state your points verbatim in your intro — in fact, it will probably save you time not to do so 🙂

My exam is on 13th February and I have about 1 month from now on. I tried to focus on verbal and math section more until now and did not spend enough time on AW section of the GRE. Would you recommend writing one essay per day to gain acceleration on practicing ?

Any suggestion would be appreciated. Thanks.

I am so sorry this didn’t get answered quickly, but hopefully our advice can help! I’d suggest that you first take a look at these ETS topic pools:

List of AWA Issue Prompts List of AWA Argument Prompts

Familiarize yourself with these topics, and then write several practice essays of your own using these ETS topics as a way to familiarize yourself with the questions and expectations. If you are careful to answer the actual question posed by the AWA tasks and you prepare yourself by knowing what will be expected of you on that day, you won’t have any trouble getting a good score. 🙂

Oppenheimer used nuclear fission, not fusion. 🙂 The GRE grader do not care if your facts are correct, though.

Dear Chris,

Firstly, thanks for keeping up with the blog. It’s been a great help.

Secondly, I was wondering if there is any way to insert special characters on the Gre essay software during the exam – such as those required in ‘vis-a-vis’ or ‘blase’ or ‘cliche’. If not, should these phrases/words be avoided? I’m from India and keyboards here don’t have these characters on them by default.

That is a good question. I have no idea of the keyboards here allow you to do so. Regardless, I don’t think ETS will hold that against you. Of course, there is a computer grader, but maybe it has been programmed not to dock. Still, I can’t image ETS being so picayune as to do you for not having the proper diacritic.

Hope that helps!

One thing that concerns me when writing my essays in the issue part is that a lot of the examples that come to my mind are not that well-known in the Anglosphere. I’m German, and I often think of something German scientists or politicians did or said, events that happened in Germany or things taught in German high school. The example essays that I compare my essays to usually score high by drawing on a wide range of examples that are well-known in the US. Stating my examples, that the examiner has possibly never heart of, either requires a longer explanation, for which I don’t have time, or googling on part of the examiner.

What would you suggest? In theory, the GRE should not be culturally biased. But I am afraid if I simply drop unknown German examples, the examiners might be confused.

Thank you for your advice,

PS: To know what I mean, I thought of some examples for you. Let’s say the issue is about privacy and I refer to the surge in users of the Posteo.de email client, a Berlin-based start-up whose unique selling point is that they protect their clients’ privacy as much as possible. Or in an essay about rebellion I could refer to the way the German authorities dealt with house occupiers in Dresden in contrast to those in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin wall – the occupiers in Dresden were given proper rent contracts while those in Berlin were forcefully evicted, causing violent clashes with the police. Or when writing about technology, I might want to cite the website dawanda.de where people sell self-crafted goods. I know that there exists a similar format in the US – etsy – but I am not that familiar with it and would not feel comfortable writing about it and would prefer the German example. This issue comes up for me with almost every essay I write at least once!

I am on the same boat and would love to see this question answered!

Hi Holing and Cornelia!

I know this is a late reply, but hopefully it can help others in your positions. 🙂

It is perfectly fine to use non-US examples for the GRE essays, but you want to make sure you give relevant context and information on the events so that the reader doesn’t have to guess whether or not your example really applies to the point you are trying to make. If you can do that, then any examples from your own country should be fine. 🙂

Hi, I have read in most sites that practicing essays is the best way to go for AW. But writing a full length AW issue essay or argument essay takes 30 mins each for a time limited atmosphere. So my question is while practicing from the ets pool of topics, do we need to write full length essays for every topic or just structuring and brainstorming on the topic and writing mock essays 3-4 times will be enough?

Hi, Karishma

30 minutes for each essay can definitely be tough to fit into your schedule! Doing quick structuring/brainstorming is a good alternative when you don’t have a lot of time. However, especially as you near your exam date, make sure to sit down and do a few full-length essays (not all in a row, but maybe one every few days) just so you can feel comfortable with the experience. I hope that helps! 🙂

Best, Margarette

Thanks Margarette!!

Hello people of Magoosh,

I have a question about writing a thesis for an issue task. I noticed that in the video lesson, the thesis contained a statement indicating choosing a side. However, there’s no mention of the main points covered in the body paragraphs. Is that a good practice? Don’t you think that a reader ought to know what to expect in the body paragraphs just from reading the thesis statement?

Referred thesis: “a college curriculum should be designed around the career a student will pursue upon graduation”

Excellent question! In a typical, untimed essay you definitely would want to let the reader know what is coming. The intro and thesis should give the reader some idea of where the discussion is headed and what will be discussed. This is a common practice in American essay writing.

But with the GRE, our strategies are a little different. Since we have such a limited amount of time to write an essay, we recommend spending as little time as possible writing the introduction and conclusion. The bulk of your time should be spent crafting the body paragraphs. As such, we only recommend stating your opinion or stance on the topic and not worry about prefacing your examples and reasons.

This isn’t to say that you can’t do this. If you are a quick writer and have the time, then you can definitely indicate what the main points of your body paragraph will be. 🙂

Happy Studying!

I just started practicing the AWA and am following the 90-day study plan for beginners. I’m trying my best to follow the outlined time structure you suggested in the videos, but in my first two essays I’ve always run out of time and always seem to produce mediocre work. Would you recommend that I practice writing without a time limit for now? Or should I just keep working with the time limit and would I gradually improve with more practice?

Hi Lara, Happy to help!

First, I recommend to keep practicing. Writing the essays on the GRE is a particular type of skill that needs lots of practice. So keep your head down and keep at it.

Second, if you feel like you need extra practice, try writing an essay more often. Instead an essay a week, write two. This will give you more opportunities for improvement.

Third, I recommend that you keep timing yourself. It doesn’t help to be good at writing an essay in an hour. We need to be good at writing an essay in half an hour.

One thing that I have done with my students in the past is have them write only an introduction or only an introduction and body paragraph in a set amount of time. So give yourself a time limit of 8 minutes and see if you can complete an introduction and body paragraph. This allows you to practice writing under time constraints and you can take baby steps towards completing an essay in 30 minutes.

I hope that this helps! Best of luck in your studies! 🙂

I just started reading the book you recommended: On Writing Well, by William Zinsser. Although I would love read all of it, I don’t have much time to spare. Could you suggest what chapters would most benefit us for the GRE AWA ?

Good question! I think the grammar-related passages are important. As are the chapters that relate to crafting sentences and creating paragraphs.

Hi Chris, Do you know if there are any sites where I can find high scoring sample essays? I’ve been practicing but feel as though I’m in a void as I have no point of comparison. Getting feedback from family and friends is helpful, but I’d just feel so much better if I could compare my essays to actual GRE essays. I could only find one sample set on the ets website…

It seems that only gre.org offers example essays. Just google “example GRE essays” and it should be the second hit.

Besides that there aren’t too many others I can think of that are online. Writing higher scoring essays, ‘5.5-6’ for blog posts is something I plan to do soon though :).

Hello! I would enormously appreciate if you can clarify me this. Which link are you referring to in the following sentence?:

” For practical advice on practicing: the link below provides access to hundreds of essay prompts by ETS”.

I cannot find it anywhere and it would be of invaluable help for me to have these essay prompts in order to practice.

Thank you very much!

No problem :).

Here is the link: http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/analytical_writing/issue/pool

Thanks for your quick response!

So I just found out ETS has started employing their e-rater technology. Thoughts?

Thanks for reporting that! Well, I hope it is better than the GMATs, which apparently counts number of words, a couple of transition sentences, etc. I guess time will tell.

whats e-rater technology, mentioned by J, Chris??

Sometime it seems that we cannot write enough in the issue task.

If we practice one essay per day, who will rectify this and will tell us how to improve our score in analytic. So that we can BUT ALL feel confident to write essay with positive tone.

Yes, that is true, and indeed I need to write another post on generating ideas.

As for somebody to give you feedback, find a trusted family member or friend. Of course, that person would not want to read everyone of your essays, but as long as you get feedback every once in awhile that will help :).

This sentence is dead-on, “If you think you did poorly on the essays, that knowledge could very well affect your performance on the rest of the test.”

I recently talked with a student who was consistently scoring in the 80th percentile on math and verbal in practice. But he wasn’t prepared for the writing section on test day and it affected his concentration throughout the rest of the exam. He scored in the 60th percentile. Doing well on writing can definitely set a positive tone for the rest of the exam.

Yes, I am happy to hear that student’s experience echo my thoughts. Really, “Doing well on writing can definitely set a positive tone for the rest of the exam” is perhaps the greatest GRE tip that nobody has ever heard of.

Did u mean non-native below?? “Two of the preeminent prose stylists of the English-language novel were both native-English speakers.”

Ha! Yes, I definitely did. Thanks for catching that :).

The GRE ® General Test

One test for graduate, business and law school

Select a step to learn more about your GRE ® General Test journey.

Overview of the Analytical Writing Measure

Analytical writing measure (beginning september 22, 2023).

The Analytical Writing measure of the GRE General Test administered beginning September 22, 2023, assesses your critical thinking and analytical writing skills by assessing your ability to:

• articulate and support complex ideas
• construct arguments
• sustain a focused and coherent discussion

It doesn’t assess specific content knowledge.

The Analytical Writing measure consists of a 30-minute “Analyze an Issue”  task. This task presents an opinion on an issue and instructions on how to respond. You’re required to evaluate the issue, consider its complexities and develop an argument with reasons and examples to support your views.

You’ll use a basic word processor developed by ETS to type your essay responses. The word processor contains the following functionalities: insert text, delete text, cut-and-paste and undo the previous action. Tools such as a spellchecker and grammar checker are not available.

Analytical Writing Measure before September 22, 2023

The Analytical Writing measure of the GRE General Test administered before September 22, 2023, assesses your critical thinking and analytical writing skills by assessing your ability to:

• construct and evaluate arguments

The Analytical Writing measure consists of two separately timed analytical writing tasks:

• The "Analyze an Issue" task presents an opinion on an issue and instructions on how to respond. You’re required to evaluate the issue, consider its complexities and develop an argument with reasons and examples to support your views.
• The "Analyze an Argument" task requires you to evaluate an argument according to specific instructions. You’ll need to consider the logical soundness of the argument rather than agree or disagree with the position it presents.

The two 30-minute tasks are complementary. The Issue task requires you to construct your own argument, while the Argument task requires you to evaluate someone else's argument.

Preparing for the Analytical Writing measure

Everyone — even the most practiced and confident of writers — should spend time preparing for the Analytical Writing measure to understand the skills measured and how the tasks are scored. It may also be useful to review the scoring guides, sample topics, scored sample essay responses and rater commentary for each task.

The tasks in the Analytical Writing measure relate to a broad range of subjects — from the fine arts and humanities to the social and physical sciences — but don’t require specific content knowledge. Each task has been tested by actual GRE test takers to ensure that it possesses several important characteristics, including the following:

• GRE test takers, regardless of their field of study or special interests, understood the task and could easily respond to it.
• The task elicited the kinds of complex thinking and persuasive writing that university faculty consider important for success in graduate school.
• The responses were varied in content and in the way the writers developed their ideas.

Published topic pools for the Analytical Writing measure

To help you prepare for the Analytical Writing measure, the GRE Program has published the entire pool of tasks from which your test tasks will be selected. You might find it helpful to review the Issue and Argument pools:

• Issue Topic Pool (PDF)
• Argument Topic Pool (PDF)  (the Argument task was removed from the General Test beginning September 22, 2023)

Test-taking strategies for the Analytical Writing measure (in the General Test beginning September 22, 2023)

• Before taking the GRE General Test, review the strategies, sample topics, sample essay responses with rater commentary, and scoring guide for the task. This will give you a deeper understanding of how raters evaluate essays and the elements they're looking for in an essay.
• It is important to budget your time. Within the 30-minute time limit, allow sufficient time to consider the issue and the specific instructions, plan a response, and compose your essay. You want your essay response to be the best possible example of your writing that you can produce under the testing conditions.
• Save a few minutes at the end of the timed task to check for obvious errors. An occasional spelling or grammatical error won’t affect your score, but serious and persistent errors detract from the overall effectiveness of your writing and lower your score accordingly.

How Long Should GRE Essays Be?

It’s strange how you can answer the same question in 20 words or 20,000. The GRE essays are proof of this. The writing portions ask you to demonstrate subject knowledge and analytical ability.

For students anxious about test-taking or writing specifically, the essay length can be one of the most frustrating and unclear aspects. How long should GRE essays be? How much material is sufficient to offer a fully developed argument?

Understandably, there’s a degree of ambiguity in terms of the length the exam scorers will expect. Here, we explain tips for writing GRE essays so that you can submit material with sufficient depth and length to achieve a solid score.

Check out our Best GRE Prep Course  here to know which is the best GRE prep course for you.

How to Write a GRE Essay with the Best Length

Data suggests that the highest-scoring GRE essays tend to be around 600 words.

However, when you’re in the middle of taking an exam, you won’t have time to count how many words you’ve written.

Even though the ETS is reticent about how it grades GRE essays, you can still prepare effectively. The GRE essay requires candidates to offer a concise but complete solution to a problem. There is no minimum or maximum word or page count.

So how long should GRE essays be to fulfill the criteria?

The answer is to make a few vital points relevant to the question, backed up with evidence. Below, we’ll cover how long an argument should be, what it should include, and writing tips for creating a well-supported argument.

You can also see our post on GRE vs LSAT for comparison and conversion guide.

1. Practice for Length and Time

The GRE has two essay components , each timed for 30 minutes: an “issue analysis” and an “argument analysis” essay.

The best way to plan for these without knowing the prompts is to practice before test day. Time yourself for 30 minutes writing in response to the various topic pools. The ETS has published sample prompts from previous topic pools that you can use to practice the issue essay and the argument essay .

After you reach the 30-minute mark, re-read your writing. Consider if each point is relevant and how much you were able to write in that time.

2. Choose Your Best Angles

Before test day, you’ll also want to develop solid exam-writing habits. The first is brainstorming.

Note down the points you intend to make. Which arguments best address the question? Prioritize the most important sections.

The 5 minutes you spend planning a good essay are valuable to your score . The 15 minutes you spend grinding out 200 words of filler are not.

That said, you don’t want to prioritize expertise over relevance. Address the question in front of you, not the question that would allow you to show off your knowledge.

Try for three to five supporting ideas to create a fully fleshed-out argument.

3. Structure for Coherent Organization

The point you consider most relevant to the question should be the point you lead with, and each paragraph should build on the previous one. You’ll want to plan for this with a solid organizational structure.

Before you start writing, structure your arguments so that one leads logically to the next.

Your essay should be more than the sum of its parts, and organization is an essential element of a clear and convincing essay. Disjointed arguments make it difficult for the reader to understand what you’re trying to tell them.

4. Write Fully Developed Paragraphs

A supporting body paragraph should contain one, fully developed idea. Before you start writing, try to visualize how much you have to say about each point you’re making. Each paragraph should include:

• Your argument (expressed in the topic sentence)
• Supporting evidence
• Analysis of the evidence
• Explanation tying the argument & evidence back to the essay problem

There’s no hard-and-fast rule for how long an argumentative paragraph should be, and sometimes you need multiple sentences to explain an idea. Still, 3-5 sentences is a good benchmark.

You can also check out our post on How Many Times Can You Take The GRE here.

5. Use Relevant Examples & Evidence

For every point, brainstorm evidence to support your case . The more you have prepared for each argument, the better. The phrasing of the question may make some evidence more relevant than others.

Briefly summarize the evidence and explain how it addresses the question. Data is nothing without context, so only use it if you can explain why it’s relevant!

6. Finish Strong with the Conclusion

Nobody likes a half-baked ending — make sure you write a conclusion ! Your conclusion should summarize and connect the main points of your essay and address the fundamental question of the essay.

It’s also an opportunity to show why your writing is not only relevant to the task at hand but a potential contribution to a larger debate. Don’t introduce new ideas, but do suggest possible directions that your essay could lead.

For you to have more idea, see our post on How Long Is The GRE and also our post on How Hard Is The GRE here.

Conclusion—How Long Should GRE Essays Be?

Hopefully, this has answered your concerns about how long should GRE essays be. There isn’t a definitive answer, but the tips here should allow you to write a thoughtful, well-supported essay, and that is what the ETS scorers want to see.

The complete guide to the GRE exam

What is the GRE? The GRE, short for Graduate Record Examination, is a standardized test offered by ETS for graduate school admissions of all kinds, including business (MBA) and law programs. In this post, we will cover everything you need to know about the GRE, including when, where and how to take the test; how the GRE is scored and what is a good GRE score; how hard is the GRE; how to send scores; tips for studying for the exam; and much more. Read on for a deep dive into the GRE, and use the Table of Contents below to go to any specific question that you have. 

• GRE overview
• What is on the GRE?
• How long is the GRE test?
• How much does the GRE cost?
• How hard is the GRE?
• GRE scoring
• How is the GRE scored?
• What is a good GRE score?
• How to prepare for the GRE 
• When to take the GRE exam?
• How long should I study for the GRE?
• Should I hire a GRE tutor?

How to take the GRE

How to sign up for the gre, where to take the gre, what to bring to the gre, how many times can you take the gre, how long should gre essays be, after taking the gre, how long does it take to get gre scores, can i see my scores at the test center immediately after taking the gre, how long are gre scores valid, how do i send gre scores to an institution, how long does it take to send gre scores to my chosen schools, do i need to take the gre subject test after the general test.

The GRE test consists of three sections: Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning, and Analytical Writing. 

GRE Verbal Reasoning

From the ETS website, the GRE Verbal Reasoning section measures your ability to: 

• Analyze and evaluate written material and synthesize information obtained from it
• Analyze relationships among component parts of sentences
• Recognize relationships among words and concepts

The GRE Verbal Reasoning section has three question types, which are all tested through multiple-choice questions: 

Reading Comprehension

The questions on Reading Comprehension are based on passages on topics ranging from the physical sciences, biological sciences, social sciences, business, arts and humanities and everyday topics. The passages are based on material found in books and periodicals, both academic and nonacademic. You will need to be able to read these graduate school-level passages and understand them; distinguish their key points; infer missing information; identify the author’s position and its strengths and weaknesses; and draw conclusions from the passage.

Text Completion

From the name itself, test takers are to fill in the blanks to complete the text from a passage that is composed of one to five sentences. If there is only one blank, there will be five answer choices; if there are two or three blanks, there will be three answer choices per blank. The answer choices function independently (although the context of one may be relevant for the others) and there is a single correct answer per blank.

GRE Text Completion sample question

Sentence Equivalence

The Sentence Equivalence questions consist of a single sentence with just one blank and six choices. From these choices, you must select two from the answer choices that lead to a complete, coherent sentence while producing sentences that mean the same thing as a whole context.

GRE Sentence Equivalence sample question

GRE Quantitative Reasoning

From the ETS website, the GRE Quantitative Reasoning section measures your ability to: 

• Basic math skills
• Understanding of elementary math concepts
• Reason quantitatively and to model and solve problems with quantitative methods

The GRE Quantitative Reasoning focuses on arithmetic, algebra, geometry, data interpretation (tables and charts), and statistics. It does not include questions that are beyond 11th grade level math, such as trigonometry, calculus, the ability to construct a proof, or inferential statistics.

The GRE Quantitative Reasoning section has four question types: 

Quantitative Comparison

This is the trickiest of the four question types on the GRE Quantitative Reasoning. Quantitative Comparison questions ask you to compare two quantities, which often include variables. You are asked to pick one of four answers:

• Quantity A is greater.
• Quantity B is greater.
• The two quantities are equal.
• The relationship cannot be determined from the information given.

The answer choices are always the same for every quantitative comparison question so it’s easy to keep them straight.

GRE Quantitative comparison sample question

Multiple-choice questions – choose one

Your standard multiple choice question – figure out the right answer and choose it from among the four answers. Be sure to eliminate wrong answers to increase your chances for success.

GRE multiple-choice (choose one) sample question

Multiple-choice questions – choose many

Similar to regular multiple choice, but this type has a twist: you can select one or many answers. Pay close attention to what the question is asking and how many answers you should select.

GRE multiple-choice (choose many) sample question

Numeric Entry questions

Numeric Entry questions simply give you a text box where you must enter your answer. These questions will often ask you to round to the nearest whole number or similar, so pay close attention to the instructions to ensure you aren’t accidentally disqualified.

GRE Numeric Entry sample question

GRE Analytical Writing

Unlike the other two sections, the Analytical Writing section does not involve questions. Instead, you write an essay that is both human and computer-graded by ETS afterwards. The GRE currently contains two writing assignments: Analyze an Issue and Analyze an Argument . After September 23rd, 2023, the GRE Analytical Writing section will only contain the Analyze an Issue section.

From the ETS website, the GRE Analytical Writing section measures your ability to: 

• Articulate and support complex ideas
• Construct and evaluate arguments
• Sustain a focused and coherent discussion

You do not need to know any specific information to prepare for the GRE Analytical Writing section. They will give you enough information or use general-enough topics that anyone can write about them without preparation. Consult the official GRE Issue Topic Pool and Argument Topic Pool for more information.

GRE Analyze an Issue sample topic

The truest measure of success is what an individual is able to accomplish.

Write a response in which you indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with the above statement. Be sure to support your position with appropriate reasons and/or examples.

GRE Analyze an Argument sample topic

The following is an internal bulletin released by the Chairman of the Board of Directors at MicroStar.

“Ever since Paul Browning was promoted to CEO of MicroStar one year ago, the company has been in an unmitigated downward spiral. Not only has Browning overseen the most ruinous fiscal year in the history of the company, but he has also seen exceptionally high turnover among his direct reports. This functionally constitutes a vote of no confidence on the part of his employees, who are seeking better opportunities elsewhere. On the other hand, Eiko Kanazawa, MicroStar’s current head of marketing, has successfully conducted her division through its most productive year to date, while coming in significantly under budget at the same time. Therefore, the Board should replace Browning with Kanazawa as CEO of MicroStar as soon as possible.”

Write a response in which you evaluate the explicit and/or implicit assumptions in the presented argument. Make sure to discuss how the argument would be impacted by the confirmation and/or disconfirmation of these assumptions.

How long does the GRE take? Starting September 22, 2023, ETS is releasing a shorter GRE exam that will take a lot less time. The entire GRE exam used to be 3 hours and 45 minutes long, but the new GRE is much shorter, and will take just 1 hour and 58 minutes . Below is a breakdown of the allotted time for each section:

The allotted time for each question is roughly the same, so the test should be similar to the previous iteration, just shorter. 

How much does it cost to take the GRE? The GRE exam fee is $220 in all areas of the world, including the United States, except for China and India. In China, the price is $231.30, and in India, the price is ₹ 22,550 or $273.17 as of August 2023.

You will have to pay an additional fee as well for the following services:

• Rescheduling fee – $50
• Changing your test center – $50
• Additional score reports – $30 per recipient
• Score reinstatement fee – $50
• Second review of Analytical Writing score – $60

All prices are from the ETS GRE fee website , which was last updated July 1st, 2023. These fees will be slightly different in China and India as well – please refer to the ETS website for more information.

For New York state residents, ETS has also made available a question and answer review service for the Verbal Reasoning & Quantitative Reasoning sections for $50.

So how hard is the GRE? The general consensus is that the GRE is more difficult than college entrance exams such as the ACT and SAT, but not quite as hard as some other graduate admissions tests like the GMAT, LSAT, or MCAT. This is because the GRE is a general test that doesn’t require knowledge in a specialized field (like the LSAT or MCAT) or advanced math and logic skills (like the GMAT).

That’s not to say that the GRE is easy either. Below, we outline the key challenges that make the GRE test difficult:

Compared to other graduate admissions exams, the GRE is the one with the largest emphasis on vocabulary. This is manageable for most native English speakers with a good vocabulary and some studying, but can be particularly challenging for ESL students. 

The GRE Quantitative Reasoning section is pretty much all math, and specifically covers algebra, geometry, statistics, and data interpretation. If you struggled with high school math, this will be a tough section for you. And many who take the GRE later in life will have forgotten some of the rules and equations that are necessary to ace the test (you don’t need to calculate the area of a parallelogram in most jobs). The computer-based GRE calculator that you’re required to use is also somewhat clumsy to use and can be challenging for test takers that are used to more advanced calculators.

Not-so-straightforward questions

Unlike the SAT or ACT, which ask you straightforward questions, GRE questions can be intentionally tricky. While the GRE is less bad about this than the GMAT, it still has its fair share of questions that are written in a way that will lead you to a wrong answer choice at first glance. Make sure you’re carefully reading the questions and understand what they’re really asking for.

The GRE offers you 90 seconds per Verbal Reasoning question and 105 seconds per Quantitative Reasoning question. While this is more time than you got per-question on the ACT or SAT, these questions are a lot more complex and thus take longer to solve. Many people find that the time constraint is one of the most challenging aspects of the GRE test, which is why knowing shortcuts and how to identify answers quickly is so important.

The writing section

While the writing section has been reduced from two essays to one in the new GRE format coming out September 22nd, 2023, it is still challenging to write a good and long essay in just 30 minutes. Our GRE essay research found that an essay with 750 words or more was likely to get a higher score – hitting that target means writing 25 words per minute. That’s harder than it looks when you include time for planning the essay, structuring it, and writing it in a high quality way.

All in all, the GRE is considered ‘medium’ difficult in the context of other graduate school exams. It’s not an easy test by any means – it is assessing fitness for graduate school-level academics – but it’s not as tricky as the GMAT or challenging as the MCAT or LSAT. With proper preparation, you can reach your target GRE score and get into your target graduate program. More on that below.

Your GRE score is actually two parts. First, there is your raw score , which is how many problems you got right on the exam. Then, that raw score is converted by ETS into a scaled score , which is what you actually see when you get your report and what institutions will see when you submit scores. 

How your raw score converts into your scaled score is determined by a number of factors, including the difficulty of the questions you got right and wrong and the grading curve of the test population overall. Your scaled score is scored for each section individually:

• Verbal Reasoning: Scored between 130 (minimum) to 170 (perfect), in 1 point increments
• Quantitative Reasoning: Scored between 130 (minimum) to 170 (perfect), in 1 point increments
• Analytical Writing: Scored between 0-6, in half point increments

The GRE’s max score is 340 (combined scores range from 260-340). The average GRE score is a 304, constituted by a 151 on Verbal and a 153 on Quantitative. The Analytical Writing average is 3.6.

What is a good score on the GRE? The best way to gauge a good GRE score is by reviewing GRE scores as GRE percentiles . A percentile is essentially what percentage of total test takers that the score beats. So a score that is 80th percentile is better than 80% of all GRE test takers. With that in mind, here is a table of the GRE score percentile and scores associated for all three sections:

Now, these are national scores, so while this is helpful if you’re curious about the average GRE score, it probably isn’t directly applicable to your needs. The real question is: What is a good GRE score for the program I am applying to ? For this, you need to find the median GRE score and score range for admitted students to the program you’re applying to. Even within universities, different programs (ie Arts vs. Engineering) will have dramatically different GRE score requirements. Take a look at the chart below for nationwide averages for popular programs: 

The scores you need to get generally correlate with what skills are most important in the major. For instance, Physical Sciences majors require a lot more quantitative skills than verbal skills. As a further example, look at what GRE score you need to get into Harvard :

And what GRE score you need to get into Stanford :

Research this for your target schools and programs, and then you will have a much better idea of what GRE score you need to get. See our post on GRE percentiles for more detail and GRE percentile info for 10 top colleges.

GMAT vs. GRE scores

Between the GMAT and GRE, the GRE generally offers better admissions chances – in the most prestigious business schools, the median accepted GRE scores are an average of 9 percentile points lower than median GMAT scores:

• Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania: 96th percentile for GMAT; 85th percentile for GRE
• Stanford Graduate School of Business: 96th percentile for GMAT; 91st percentile for GRE
• Harvard Business School: 96th percentile for GMAT; 88th percentile for GRE

On average, the GRE to GMAT conversion for similar percentiles makes the GRE the more attractive and attainable option. For more detail, read our post on GMAT vs. GRE .

The GRE is offered year-round at accredited test centers like Prometric or at home . To determine the best time to take the GRE, there are two key considerations:

• When are your score submission deadlines for the graduate programs that you’re applying to?
• How long do you want to give yourself to study?

Most graduate school applicants apply for a Fall Semester start. These application deadlines are typically in December. Spring Semester application deadlines are typically in August.

From here, you can work backwards: 

ETS takes approximately 10 to 15 days to send your GRE scores to schools. They expect that this will be reduced to 5 to 10 days with the new GRE coming out on September 23rd, 2023, but we recommend leaving the extra time. You will receive an email notification that your official scores are now available in your ETS Account.

• If you want to build in time for a second attempt, you need to wait 21 days between test attempts on the GRE.
• Then, you need to study. We cover this in more detail later in this post, but as a general benchmark, you should expect to study at least 3 months. 

In total, you want to prepare to take your first GRE at least 15 days before the earliest score submission deadline of the schools you’re applying to. And if you want to have two GRE attempts, then you’d want to take your first GRE at least 36 days before the deadline. As we outline below in the How to prepare for the GRE section, you will probably want at least two, preferably three months to study.

ETS takes approximately 10 to 15 days to send your GRE scores to schools. They expect that this will be reduced to 5 to 10 days with the new GRE coming out on September 23rd, 2023, but we recommend leaving the extra time. You will receive an email notification that your official scores are now available in your ETS Account. Source: ETS.org 2023

When to take the GRE as a current college student

Taking the GRE as a current student is recommended for people with a strong intent to apply to graduate school immediately after undergrad or within a couple years. Your GRE score is valid for five years, and conventional wisdom is that people still currently in school have more contextual knowledge. Put simply – you’re already studying and taking tests far more often than someone in the working world, so you’re probably going to be better prepared.

Looking at the calendar, you’ll notice that GRE prep for a December deadline would occur during a fall semester if you’re a current student. For this reason, you may want to study for and take the GRE during the summer instead, even if you’re applying for a fall program. 

If you’re applying for a spring semester intake program, then you can and should also study during the summer, but the timing is a lot more obvious – most spring semester deadlines are in August.

How long to study for GRE? A general rule of thumb is that you should expect to study for at least 2 to 3 months, but the truth is that the amount of time you study matters a lot more than the timeframe you study over. You should expect to spend at least 100 hours studying, which over 12 weeks is about eight hours per week. And the more time you spend studying, the more time you have to improve your score.

How much you need to study also depends on what your current score is, and what score you want to reach. To determine your current score, take one of the free ETS PowerPrep official GRE practice tests – this will be the most accurate measure of your true GRE score. Then, look up the GRE percentiles of the program you’re applying for. The further that your current score is from your target score, the more you need to study. And the closer that your target score is to a maximum 170 score, the more difficult it will be to get there.

The industry estimate is that increasing your score 5 points on the GRE takes 40 hours. Study habits vary and learning speed depends on the individual, but it’s good to put the numbers down to be realistic about how much work you have ahead of you:

• 5 points = 40 hours
• 10 points = 80 hours
• 20 points = 160 hours
• 30 points = 240 hours

These are rough guidelines, but should give you a sense of the scale of the challenge ahead of you and how much studying you need to do to get there.

GRE study schedule advice for working professionals

Studying for the GRE as a working professional can be challenging, and not just because you’re out of practice. The #1 reason professionals have difficulty studying is time. Your work is time consuming, of course, but it’s your social life that will often be the biggest challenge to schedule around. If you make plans to study every Wednesday night at 6pm, and your friend invites you to dinner, you need to either keep your schedule or reschedule your study time. 

The goal here is to be realistic – how many hours per week will you actually study? Recall the 100 hour target that we shared earlier, and map out your study schedule versus your test date. Be honest with yourself and don’t be afraid to adjust your schedule if you get two weeks in and find yourself falling behind. For this reason, we recommend that you schedule an extra month or even two for studying as a working professional. This gives you a buffer in case you have a conference or crazy week at work and still need to get your 10 hours in that week.

Before deciding if you should hire a GRE tutor, you should consider all of your options and consider what will work best for your learning style and schedule. At a high level, there are four main paths (ordered from least to most expensive):

• Paper textbook: Study at your own pace, entirely self-directed, but no adaptive support, analytics, or interactivity. Textbooks can cost anywhere from $50 – $300, but most are on the lower end.
• Online self-study course: Study at your own pace, interactive, and provides analytics. Good programs (such as Achievable’s GRE prep course ) will adapt to your strengths and weaknesses, and motivate you to stay on task. Most GRE online courses are between $150 and $600.
• Online class: Take classes online on a set schedule. This can help with staying on task and it is nice to have an instructor available to give you immediate feedback and answer your questions. However, class-based prep is more expensive – most online GRE classes are in the range of $1,200 – $2,500.
• In-person class: Take classes offline on a set schedule. Many of the benefits of online classes are also shared by in-person classes, and some find the in-person setting better for staying on task and feedback than even online classes. However, you will need to travel to a classroom, which is time consuming and requires that you’re in town for the duration of the program. And their cost is similar to online classes or a bit higher.
• Hiring a GRE tutor: Hiring a personal GRE tutor will give you the most personalized support and feedback on questions. Good GRE tutors will also tailor their approach to your specific needs to help you get the most out of their tutoring sessions. And unfortunately, GRE tutoring is by far the most expensive option, typically costing between $200-300 an hour.

In all of the above options, the quality of your course is going to vary depending on the instructor you get and the firm you work with. For online courses, the quality of the software product you’re using also makes a big impact on your studies.

An economical approach that many pursue is to start with an online self-study course, and then hire a tutor to target weak areas. But if cost is no object, then going with a tutor from the beginning will be your most personalized and hands-on option.

You must create an ETS account to register for the GRE. Your ETS account will be used for registration purposes and also gives you the following features:

• Sign up for the free GRE Search Service
• View scores
• View, change or cancel registration
• Apply for and view approved testing accommodations
• Order additional score reports
• Access the free GRE Diagnostic Service
• Purchase test preparation materials from ETS
• The option to receive notifications concerning your test and scores through text messages and email

By having an ETS Account, you get the most up-to-date test center information and help with determining which graduate institutions or fellowship sponsors you want to receive your scores. As part of your test fee, you can designate up to four score recipients. If you prefer to send score reports later or want to send score reports to more than four recipients, you can send additional score reports for a fee.

How to create an ETS Account

Create a Test Taker Account on the ETS website here . You can create an account at any time, regardless of whether or not you plan to register for a GRE test. 

• Make sure that the name you use when creating your ETS Account is the name that will be reflected on your GRE General Test registration. It must exactly match (excluding accents) the name printed on the identification, or ID documents that you will present on the day of the test (especially its spelling). If you have a two-part last name, be sure to supply your complete last name as it appears on the ID documents (excluding accents). Do not register under a nickname and do not register with only an initial as your first name. 
• Enter your phone information under Communications Preferences for text messages and special offer emails.
• Create a personalized username and password. Then, select a security question from the drop down box and enter your answer.
• Review the Terms and Conditions and then select the “I agree” box and then “Next.”
• And finally, review all filled up information and make sure everything is accurate. For any changes, just select the “Back” button. Click “Submit” if everything is in order.

You will receive a confirmation page and your account is then set up. You can immediately register to take the GRE General Test. You will also receive a confirmation email – look for that to make sure you entered your email correctly and that the ETS emails are not going to your Spam Folder. 

Your ETS account will let you view, change or cancel your registration and purchase test preparation materials prior to test day. Then after test day, you will use your account to view your scores, order Additional Score Reports, access the free GRE Diagnostic Service, amongst others.

How to register for the GRE?

Log in and confirm details

Log directly into the ETS Account you created at www.ets.org/mygre . Enter your username and password in the “Returning Users” field or signing in for Test Takers

You will be redirected to their My GRE home page which shows your registered full name and ETS ID number. Make sure your registered full name matches the full name on your government ID.

Pick a test center

Now it’s time to select your test center and date. Select the blue “Register/Find Test Centers, Dates” button, and then select the test (GRE General Test) you want to take from the drop down box. You can search for a test date by sorting with the “By Date” or “By Distance” tabs.

• If by Date: Choose any of the dates highlighted in green in the calendar or scroll through the date options list and it will show all available times. Select the time you prefer by selecting “Register” to the right of the time.
• If by Distance: Choose your preferred test center in the “Find test centers at or near this location” field, which by default is already prepopulated. It will show how many seats and times are available at that test center on the date chosen.

Test dates are displayed in a two-month period window. Use the blue arrow to change months if your preferred test date is outside of the two-month window.

Finalize your test date

Review the test, test date, time and test center location information in the yellow shaded box at the top of the page. For any changes, just select the blue “Edit Test Information” button. Review the registration policies and if you agree, check the “I understand” box at the bottom of its page and select “Next.” You will be redirected to review the personal information you entered.

Once you confirm it is all in order, select the blue “Next” button. You will be asked of your interest to participate in the free GRE Search Service. Review the full details, select your preference and select the blue “Next” button. 

Then, confirm your purchase/s by selecting the blue “proceed to checkout” button. This is where you enter any voucher or promotional code you may have at the top of the page and select the blue “Apply” button to activate it. Select the blue “Pay Now” button, and then select your payment option from Credit or Debit card, US bank funds transfer or PayPal. Once complete, click “Buy”. You will be taken to a confirmation page and sent a confirmation email – be sure to check this to confirm that all of your details are correct.

The GRE General Test is available at more than 1,000 test centers, such as Prometric, in more than 160 countries. The GRE can also be taken at home under specific controlled conditions. Both are monitored by a human proctor.

ETS offers the computer-delivered test all year round and is on a first-come, first-serve basis based on their published seat availability within a two-month period for that testing center. The vast majority of students take the computer-delivered test. 

The paper-delivered GRE exam can only be taken in locations where you are not able to take the computer-delivered version or eligible for the at-home GRE. For the paper-delivered version, test takers are required to choose a testing center before being provided with the center’s seat availability. 

To schedule a GRE test in your area, go to this ETS website and use their search function to find the nearest test center.

Can I take the GRE test at home?

Yes, you can take the GRE at home . You can take the GRE test at home 7 days a week, 24 hours per day, and appointments can be made as early as just 24 hours after you register. In order to test at home, you must be in an eligible country and meet the ETS Equipment and Environment Requirements , which are:

GRE Equipment requirements for At-Home administration

• You must use a desktop or laptop computer (PC or Mac only) that matches or exceeds the ProctorU minimum technical requirements
• You can only use one monitor (this is checked before starting the exam)
• You must use Chrome or Firefox browser
• You must download and install the ETS Secure Test Browser ( Windows download , Mac download )
• You must run the ProctorU Equipment Check on the test computer
• You must use a speaker with the proctor. Headphones are not allowed.
• You must use a microphone that is not part of a headset to communicate with the proctor
• You must have a camera or webcam, and you must be able to move it to show a 360-degree view of the room, including your tabletop surface

GRE Environment requirements for At-Home administration

• You must be alone and remain alone in a room for the entire duration of the test. This means you cannot take the test in a public space.
• You must close all doors in the room before beginning the test. The door must be visible to the proctor at all times via the camera / webcam.
• Your computer and keyboard must be on a desk or tabletop surface. This tabletop surface and surrounding area must be completely clear of all items not approved for use during the test, such as cell phones (except when checking in at the beginning), cameras, notes, et cetera. Decorations do not need to be removed.
• You must sit in a standard chair, not a bed, couch, or ‘overstuffed’ chair.
• Food and drink are not allowed
• You may not take notes on regular paper. Instead, you must use a small desktop white board with erasable marker, or a single sheet of paper inside a transparent sheet protector with erasable marker. At the end of the test, you will need to erase your notes and show that to your proctor.

GRE dress code requirements for At-Home administration

• Your ears must be visible throughout the test
• Face masks are not allowed throughout the test
• Avoid wearing jewelry or other accessories
• Dress to impress: your picture will be included with your score when sent to institutions

A valid and acceptable ID must be provided with the first and last name clearly stated and matching the registration information. ETS recommends bringing two forms of acceptable ID, which, in general, are government-issued photo IDs. The ID must be:

• Original and not photocopied or digitized
• Government-issued and legally recognized in the location where the test will be taken
• Valid and not yet expired
• Include first and last names
• Include a recent photograph
• Include a signature

In the event that the ID does not exactly match the name on the registration, you will not be permitted to test and your test fee will not be refunded. The GRE has to deal with a lot of potential cheaters, so they will not be able to cut you a break if you forget this.

For your comfort, bring water, snacks, and a sweatshirt or jacket. You want the water and snacks to keep your energy levels high throughout the test period, and you want warm clothes in case the test center is cold (it often is). You do not need to bring calculators or scratch paper, as these components are either provided on site or integrated into the testing software.

You can take the test once every 21 days , but only up to five times within a 12-month period (365 days). This rule applies even if you canceled your scores on an earlier test.

To answer this question, we hand-scored over 1,000 GRE essays and used machine learning to crunch the numbers. What we found is that essay length is one of THE most important things you can do to improve your GRE essay score. You should aim for an essay length of 750 words, preferably closer to 1,000 words in order to get the maximum score for word count in GRE essay grading. 

Our GRE essays post has more detail on what affects your score, examples with grading and score contributions by subject, and our post on GRE essay topics also has additional examples.

Once you take the GRE, you now need to get your test scores sent to different colleges and potentially consider taking the test again. Here’s the answers to your most frequently asked questions for what to do after taking the GRE:

If you took the paper-based test (normally for test-takers outside of the United States), you can view your scores online around five weeks after your test date. 

The simple answer is yes . After the GRE exam, you will be able to view your unofficial scores for the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning sections of the exam. Due to the scoring process of the Analytical Writing section of the GRE test, which requires a human grader, you will not have access to this score at the test center. However, remember that the scores you see immediately are the ‘unofficial scores’ – your ‘official scores’ will be made available in your ETS Account online later and are the ones actually sent to schools.

What are unofficial and official GRE scores?

The scores you will be able to access at the end of the GRE test are your unofficial scores for the Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning sections. These are unofficial since your scores are subject to change in the normalization process for that version of the test. That said, students’ unofficial scores will be the same as their official scores the vast majority of the time, and any changes will be (at most) one point in either direction. Your official scores will include all sections of the exam and will be made available within 15 days of your test date.

Your GRE scores are valid for 5 years after your test date. This means that if you are ambivalent about your plans for the future, or maybe you want to take the test again to gain better scores, you will have plenty of time to decide.

ETS will keep your score on file for that length of time as well. After that, your records are purged from the ETS database and will no longer be accessible.

Your test fee comes with the option to send your test scores to up to four graduate schools or programs for free. 

• For the computer-based GRE General Test, you will be asked to select your score recipients after the exam at the test center.
• For the paper-based GRE General Test, you will be asked to choose your score recipients when you register.

You can send your test scores to more than four programs for as long as your scores are valid for a small fee. 

With the ScoreSelect option, you can choose to send scores from your Most Recent, All, or Any test available from your reportable history. So, you have the option to retake the test and choose the best scores to submit to your programs of interest.

Please note that once a score report request is submitted, it cannot be canceled, changed, or refunded.

How long does it take to send GRE scores? It will take about the same time as it took for your official scores to become available in your ETS Account, namely: 10 to 15 business days. After the new GRE is released in September 2023, ETS hopes to reduce this to 5 to 10 business days.

If you order additional score reports, your reports will be sent 5 to 10 business days after your order is placed. 

GRE Subject tests are generally required for higher studies in Biology, Chemistry, English Literature, Mathematics, Physics, and Psychology. While the GRE Subject Test is not required for most graduate school programs, it could give you a competitive advantage over other candidates if the test is relevant to that program.

So you want a better score to get into a top university’s graduate program? Or maybe you didn’t meet the required GRE score of your chosen institution? The good news is you can take the test again. You can do so once every 21 days and up to five times within a 12-month period (365 days). This applies to all tests, including any canceled administrations.

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Continue reading

• 1. Introduction to GRE Analytical Writing
• 2. Issue Essay vs Argument Essay: 11 Key Differences
• 3. 7 Major Factors That Boost Your AWA Score
• 4. The 6 Step Process to Conquer GRE Analytical Writing
• 5. Examples and Analyses of Perfect 6.0 AWA Essays
• 6. 6 Types of False Reasoning You Should Avoid on the Argument Essay
• 7. How to Finish an Essay in 20 Minutes: 9 Effective Strategies to Save Time on the AWA Section
• 8. Top 101 Transitional Words and Phrases You Should Use to Score a 6.0 on the AWA Section
• 9. 27 Mistakes You Should Avoid When Writing Your AWA Essays
• 10. Bonus Chapter – Mind-Blowing Templates to Score a 6.0 on the AWA Section

The Advanced Guide to GRE Analytical Writing

71 mind-blowing tips, techniques, and strategies to score a perfect 6.0 on the awa.

Written By Jitta & Sachin

Introduction to GRE Analytical Writing

Getting a 99 percentile score on either of Verbal and Quant sections on the GRE requires several weeks, if not months, of diligence, patience, practice, and smart prep. But with only a fraction of the hard work you put in for Math and Verbal, and just a few days of practice, you can easily get a 99 percentile score on the AWA section. Plus, getting a 6.0 on the AWA isn’t a regular occurrence, and only about 8000 test takers around the world do it every year. So, if you can be one of those guys, you will be famous not only among your friends, but also among the admissions committees.

Unfortunately, the AWA is the most neglected section on the GRE. Test takers across the world believe that they can easily master AWA in a day or two. And look at what they end up with: The average AWA score of a GRE test taker worldwide is a mere 4.0, and the average AWA score of an Indian test taker is even lower. Now, to most Indian students, getting a 4.0 on the AWA might seem like an impressive feat. But in reality, 4.0 is considered just average in most countries. And on top of it, getting a 6.0 isn’t really as tough as it seems. It is only that you don’t know how.

If you are looking to score a perfect 6.0 on the AWA section, you will have to be a lot more planned than most other students. Just as with the Verbal and Quant sections, mastering the essay section on the GRE requires the same amount of confidence, persistence, and practice. And in addition to all that, you will also need a solid guide that can help you with all the strategies and tips. You will need an AWA Bible, so to speak.

But sadly enough, there isn’t much useful information on the internet about this frequently neglected section. Yes, there are some good articles and sample 6.0 essays that you can get with a simple Google search, but nowhere on the internet is a definitive guide to help you write a 6.0 essay on the GRE. And that is why, we at CrunchPrep, decided to provide you with a complete, advanced guide to scoring a perfect 6.0 on the AWA. And hey, don’t blame us if the 6.0 percentile goes down from 99 to 80 soon.

What is the AWA all about?

The Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) portion of the GRE consists of two essays, each of which you will need to write in 30 minutes or less. The two essays you will see on the GRE are, Analysis of an Issue and Analysis of an Argument. These two essays will always come first on your GRE test, no matter what. You cannot simply skip off AWA, move on to the other sections, and come back later. AWA itself is a separate section, and only after you finish writing the two essays can you move on further.

Despite what most students say, you should remember that the AWA only tests how well you can write an essay, and hence measures only your writing abilities. Contrary to popular opinion, the AWA does not analyze your thought process. As long as your essay sounds logical, writing ability is all it measures. We will be discussing more about this in the upcoming sections.

How important is the AWA?

It is a widely known fact that your AWA essay score is not as important as your composite math and verbal score on the GRE, and getting a 5.0 or 6.0 won’t make or break your chances of getting admitted to the university of your choice. Graduate school admissions officers only bother about your AWA score, if it is too low, or significantly lower than their usual class average. Yes, a poor score on the AWA can definitely send up a red flag, and the admissions committee will certainly think twice before letting you in. Sometimes, they even go to the extent of rereading your SOP and LORs, to find out if they were actually written by you or someone else. So, it is rather safe to say that the AWA score is an important enough factor when it comes to admissions.

What is the score range for AWA?

The AWA score ranges between 0 and 6.0, with 0.5 point increments. But what exactly does it mean to get a 6.0, or 4.0 or for that matter, a 0 on the AWA? Well, the scoring system is designed in a way that your responses to each of these essay questions are scored on a 6-point scale, with 6 being the highest score and 1, the lowest. Given below, are the parameters that ETS looks at when grading your AWA essays:

6.0 – Outstanding:

A well-articulated critique of the argument/issue, demonstrating mastery of effective writing, and displaying the following characteristics:

• Clearly identifies and analyzes the most important features of the argument with deep insight.
• Develops cogent ideas, organizes them logically, and connects them properly without sudden transitions.
• Supports the main points of the critique strongly.
• Demonstrates superior control of the English language, including diction, sentence formation, spelling, grammar and syntactic variety used in standard written English.
• Few to no flaws in the essay.

5.0 – Strong

A well-developed critique of the argument, demonstrating good control of writing, and displaying the following characteristics:

• Clearly identifies the important features of the argument and analyzes them thoughtfully.
• Develops ideas clearly, and connects them logically, with appropriate transitions.
• Gives a very sensible support to the main points of the critique.
• Has clear control of language, including diction and syntactic variety
• May have minor flaws like spelling errors, but no major flaws.

4.0 – Adequate

A satisfactory critique of the given argument, demonstrating decent control of writing, and displaying the following characteristics:

• Capable of Identifying and analyzing the main features of the argument.
• Develops and organizes ideas satisfactorily, but some important connections and transitions may be missing.
• Supports the main points of the critique.
• Demonstrates sufficient control of language, but may lack syntactic variety.
• May have many minor flaws or some major flaws.

3.0 – Limited

A satisfactory essay with clearly flawed critique of the argument, demonstrating little control of the elements of writing, and displaying the following characteristics:

• Does not identify or analyze many of the important features of the argument.
• Has limited logical development and no proper organization of ideas.
• Offers support of little relevance and value for points of the critique
• Uses language imprecisely and/or lacks sentence variety
• Contains occasional major errors or frequent minor errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics

2.0 – Seriously Flawed

An unsatisfactory essay with serious weakness in analytical writing skills, and displaying the following characteristics:

• Demonstrates no understanding of the main features of the argument.
• Almost no analyses of the main points have been made.
• Does not develop any ideas or is disorganized
• Provides nil to few relevant evidences.
• Has frequent serious problems in the use of language, grammar, spelling, and sentence structure.

1.0 – Fundamentally Deficient

An essay full of fundamental deficiencies in analytical writing skills, and displaying the following characteristics:

• Provides little to no evidence of the ability to understand and analyze the main idea.
• Failure to develop an organized response.
• Contains severe and persistent errors in language and sentence structure
• Has an unusually frequent pattern of errors in grammar, usage, and logic.
• A totally incoherent response.

0.0 – Unscorable

A paper that is totally illegible or obviously not written on the assigned topic. A score of zero is given to responses that come under one of the following cases:

• The responses are off topic.
• The responses are written in a language other than English.
• The responses are a mere copy of the given topic.
• The responses consist only of random keystroke characters.
• No response.

So, it is safe to say that if you write at least a few sentences in English, you will get a score of 1.0. But rest assured, no university under the sun will accept a score that low.

How is the AWA graded?

Each of your AWA essays is scored on a scale of 0 to 6. Two readers will read your Issue essay and assign it a deserving score and two different readers will read your Argument essay and assign it a score. Each grader will award a 6.0 to the top essays and scores of 0 are reserved for essays written on topics other than the one assigned or written in a foreign language. The graders spend about 30 seconds to 2 minutes on each essay, and give it a score based on pre-defined evaluation metrics such as the overall quality of your critical thinking and writing, as mentioned previously. The graders who evaluate the responses are college and university faculty members from various subject matter areas, including higher education.

Once the readers finish grading your essay, the two scores will be averaged to arrive at a final AWA score. If the grades given by the two readers differ by more than a point, a third, highly experienced grader is brought in to resolve the discrepancy (i.e., determine your final score for that essay).

For each essay, your final score is the average of the scores assigned by the two readers or the adjusted score assigned by the third reader.

Here’s how a typical Analytical Writing score might be derived:

If you earned scores of 6 and 5 on the Analysis of an Issue, then your final score for the Issue essay would be the average of these two i.e., (6 + 5) /2 which equals to 5.5 and if you earned scores of 4 and 5 on the Analysis of an Argument, your final score on the Argument essay would be (4 + 5) /2 which equals to 4.5.

Your final AWA score will be the average of your scores on Issue and Argument essays i.e., (5.5 + 4.5) /2 which equals to 5, which will be your final AWA score.

It should be noted that though your AWA scores range from 0 – 6, about 90 percent of all scores fall between 2 and 5. The average score for the AWA section for all the test takers so far is around 4.2.

Your Analytical Writing Assessment scores are computed and reported separately from the multiple-choice sections of the test and have no effect on your Verbal, Quantitative, or Total scores. Your score report however will not include copies of your responses; only scores are sent. You will receive your essay scores approximately 10-15 days after your test date.

What do graders look for in your AWA essays?

Most students think that essay length the only important factor when it comes to AWA scoring. But, in reality, it is not. Of course, it is one of the most important factors , but it isn’t the only factor. You will have to take many other factors into consideration, if you are looking to get anywhere near the perfect score. We have complied a list of all the factors that affect your overall AWA score, so you can be well prepared, while improving your writing skills on those lines.

The 7 Elements Graders Look For:

This is the most important, and also the most fundamental of all factors that the graders judge your essays on. The grader should understand what you are trying to say, by reading once. This makes their job easier, and they will understand that if it can be understood with just a single reading, then your essay has clarity.

As we discussed earlier, the grader can spend a maximum of only two minutes per essay, and it is your duty to make sure your essays have clearly composed ideas, because more often than not, graders do not bother to reread your essay and waste another couple of minutes. Consequently, you will end up with a score much lower than what you actually deserve.

Ask yourselves these two questions when you are writing the essays. What are you trying to say? What’s your main point? These two questions must have solid answers by the time the grader finishes reading the essay. If you think about it, these are the exact same questions you will have to answer, during Reading Comprehension. Just like how you can easily solve a Reading Comprehension question if you have answers to those two questions, graders assessing your essay will also need to find answers to these exact same questions, if you need a perfect score. Substance matters more than any other factor when it comes to your essays. So, make sure you have solid points, and clear logical reasoning that can be easily understood.

2. Structure

You should have seen it coming; structure is the second most important factor on your essays. The way an article is formatted, has a massive impact upon its readability. Your essays should read like a story; something that can be easily understood, and something that has a proper structure and organization. So, it is important that you break up your essay into distinct paragraphs, each with its own meaning and context, while maintaining a smooth transition between one paragraph and the next.

This way, every paragraph reads like a separate story, and the essay graders can easily scan through your entire response easily. Plus, since the transitions are smooth, and there aren’t any sudden twists in your response, it will make the grader’s job a whole lot easier.

So, ideally, you should have a structure in mind before you begin writing the essay. The general structure is to start with an introductory paragraph followed by 3-4 body paragraphs and finish off with a conclusion paragraph. So, you should make sure that there are at least 5-6 paragraphs in your essay, if you want a solid score on the AWA.

3. Sentence Variety

Even though you are writing several paragraphs on the same topic, you should ideally avoid writing similar or same sentences. If you are an avid reader of news, you get the point. No good writer under the sun writes two exactly same sentences in a single essay or article. Consecutive sentences with the same structure and length can sound monotonous and lifeless, and will obviously bore the reader.

Instead of sounding repetitive and boring, use sentence style skillfully. But this doesn’t mean you should rearrange the words, or chance the voice from passive to active or vice versa. It simply means that you should use a different variety of words to mean the same thing.

For example, if you have already written the sentence ‘The most important virtue of a leader is a strong sense of ethics.’, and if you have to use the same sentence at a later point in the essay, you should try and rephrase that same sentence and write something like this: ‘A strong moral framework is paramount for any leader.’ Get the point?

In this way, you should keep varying the sentence structures, flow and rhythm by switching between short and long sentences. You should also make use of transitional and signal words to vary sentence openings and endings.

4. Vocabulary

There has been a longstanding myth among test takers that the GRE really loves heavy vocabulary, and using it on your AWA essays will boost your score. Well, this isn’t true at all. We have seen students with exceptional vocabulary but poor coherence get paltry AWA scores in the past. And we have seen students with great essay scores without using heavy vocabulary.

Like we said earlier, the AWA is not testing how much vocab you have in your arsenal. There’s Sentence Equivalence and Text Completion for that. AWA only tests how logically you can deduce information and write a reasonable critique about an issue or an argument made by someone else. So, don’t buy those myths. As long as you use sensible reasoning, proper grammar and as long as you can defend your point intelligently and use precise vocabulary to convey meaning effectively, you should be alright. It is not needed that you use heavy vocabulary or GRE words.

5. Language and Grammar

Though officially ETS says you may have minor errors in the essay copy, that doesn’t mean you can ignore silly mistakes. Even though the mistakes or errors do not interfere with overall meaning and coherence, you should understand that the time you make your first error on the essay, the grader will notice it, and will be more conscious while reading the rest of the copy. The grader will be even more vigilant to see if there are any visible or obvious blunders that you have made, and this can have a negative impact on your AWA score. So, try and make sure your essay is as spotless as possible, and eliminate all errors before submitting. Take time to proofread your essay, once you finish writing it. Don’t be in a hurry to submit it off and skip to the next section.

6. Reasoning

Reasoning plays a key role in determining the overall quality of your essay. You should always look to include as many logically compelling reasons as you can to support your stance. One of the most important features about a compelling essay is its ability to convince the reader by means of sound logical reasoning. Anyone who reads your response should be totally convinced of your view point, without having second thoughts. To be able to write such a compelling and well-reasoned copy within 30 minutes would be rather difficult, but you can definitely do it with a lot of practice.

So ideally, you should be able to connect your ideas properly to the central theme or idea of the essay, and convince the reader to agree to your point of view. If the essay doesn’t sound logical or reasonable, you will unfortunately have to pay the penalty, no matter how long the essay is.

7. Evidence

In order to make your essay sound reasonable and logically sound, you will obviously need to provide sufficient evidences. If you want to impress the readers, and convince them to agree to your point of view, you will ideally want to provide convincing evidence to back up your thesis. Search for evidences, either direct or implied, and connect them with the essay. You can even create some random examples and evidences, as long as they fit the bill and don’t sound too random. Develop examples that cogently reinforce your thesis is key to a high essay score.

So, those are the 7 most important elements that graders look for in your essays. Make sure you have all these things covered in your essay, and you’re sure to see a perfect score.

Should you skip the AWA section during practice?

This is probably a question that is on the minds of many students. Almost half of the GRE test takers are native English speakers. And these students tend to neglect practicing the AWA section at home, because according to them, it’s not worth investing time on something they are very confident about. But, there are a few vital points that they don’t realize. We’ve observed what students do when they practice for the GRE, how their approaches have affected their scores on test day, and figured out four reasons as to why the AWA section is an extremely important aspect of the GRE exam.

Number 1 Reason Why Practicing GRE AWA is Important: Inflated Scores During Practice:

This is the single most important thing to consider when we talk about the importance of the essay section. Students normally tend to skip the essay section when they take practice tests, so they can directly go to the first section of Math/Verbal. Though this might seem like the obvious choice to you, you should consider the aftereffects before jumping into conclusions.

Think about it. The GRE is not a typical test that you encounter at college or elsewhere. It is a marathon. An intense, 3 hour 45 minute journey, which obviously you aren’t accustomed to. Now, if you skip the essay section during practice, you’ll be forfeiting 60 minutes of the total test time, which means you are going to have to sit for 2 hours and 45 minutes only.

This translates into an inflated overall score during practice, because you are just that much more active than you will be on test day. So, you get accustomed to sitting for 2 hours 45 minutes for the test, and your brain is hardwired to concentrate for that much time only. But, on test day, you still have two more sections to finish after you complete 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Do you get the point? It’s that extra one hour of concentration that requires sudden attention from your brain, which it sadly isn’t ready for. This is exactly why thousands of students score very low on their last two to three sections. They simply aren’t ready for the extra time, because their brains feel tired already. So, if you don’t skip the essay during practice, you’ll be writing in the exact test conditions as on test day, thereby training your brain for the big encounter.

There are a few other important reasons why you should not skip off AWA during practice , and we have discussed them separately.

How Long Should My Essay Be?

The essay graders are aware that you only get 30 minutes to write each AWA essay and they also know that you won’t be able to cover every possible argument, reason and rebuttal. Hence they do not expect you to write a super long detailed analysis of the issue or argument given to you. Remember that most GRE test takers won’t be able to find time to cover everything they would like to cover on the test.

So, how long should your AWA essay be? We see students wondering about this all the time and we know you would like to know about it too. ETS has not spoken out about the ideal length of an essay, and there is no word on the word limit as such. But there seems to be a pattern that appears on GRE sample essays that come along with the ETS official guide to the GRE.

When closely observed, there is a significant increase in the number of words from a 5.0 graded essay and a 6.0 graded essay. The reality is, longer essay is usually better. To analyze further on this topic, we have done a bit of research, and found out an interesting relation between essay length and the final score. If you look at the statistics below, you will have to concur with me. Longer essays usually score better on every essay topic.

If you are a long-essay fan and insist to pen a high scoring AWA essay on the GRE, you should write anywhere between 500-600 words. Don’t ask us why. The research shows that’s how it is, and if it true for a sample of 500 students, it must be true on a larger scale as well.

A column chart with average word count for essays from 500 students

As you can see, the longer the essay, the higher the grades. Notice that a 5+ point essay has length exceeding 500 words. Another interesting fact is, it seems as if 600 is an upper limit for word count. If you go beyond 600 words, you can see how the scores go down. This isn’t surprising, though. Almost no student on this planet can write a perfect 800 word essay under pressure in 30 minutes. If someone is shooting for a high word count, they are surely sacrificing on quality. So, it’s safe to say that 500-600 is what you should be looking at.

If you’d like to know more about the GRE essay length , we’ve done a separate post on that. Go check it out now.

Categorization of GRE Essay Topics

The most fascinating thing about the GRE essay section is that each and every essay topic that shows up on the real test is already published on the official ETS website. This may sound crazy because giving out the questions in advance is totally unnatural. By knowing the topics beforehand, you can prepare sample responses for all those topics and on the test day, all you need to do is just reproduce your sample response. Isn’t that a great advantage for you? You can get a perfect 6.0 score very easily!

But there’s a catch! You were expecting a few, aren’t you?

Well, there are close to 200 topics in all – far too many to practice responses in advance. Also, practicing each of these topics is not advisable as it is going to take a lot of time and effort and there is no point in mugging them up. You could as well spend this time on learning some math or vocabulary. However, there’s a good news. Just scanning through these two lists of essay topics will give you an excellent idea of the types of issues and arguments that show up on test day.

Now, most of the topics that show up on the GRE Essay section can be broadly grouped into five categories. I made things a bit easy for you and listed those five categories below. Take a look.

• Government/Politics
• Sciences and Technology

So, next time when you practice writing an essay response, make sure you write at least an essay from each of these categories.

How do I get ideas for the essay?

This is most likely the second most frequently asked question in our support mails by students around the world. It’s because a large number of issue and argument prompts on the official essay pool are hard to understand correctly. And when you don’t understand something, how can you write about that something?

So, what can you do about to solve this problem? Here are a couple of things you should work on:

If you were asked to write about a topic from out of nowhere, you would struggle for ideas. But when you already know that there could only be five categories from which your essay topics can show up, then you can turn the table in your favor. You should keep a few related examples for each one of these categories (i.e. education, arts, politics, technology, philosophy) as they will be handy and save you precious time on the test day.

Also, the essay prompts are full of obscure vocabulary and hence are hard to comprehend. Since, every essay prompt that could appear on the GRE is openly accessible on the official ETS website, you should give them a read through. While reading, you should also make note of all the unfamiliar words and later learn them. Learning these new words will ensure that you understand the topic well or at least allow you to take a very good guess.

How to get your essays graded?

Believe it or not, one of the most frequent questions that we receive from students around the world, is how they can get their essays graded. That is a good question, actually. Given the fact that there are so many practice tests for the GRE where you get your Math and Verbal sections graded, there is not even one practice test in the entire world that can grade your AWA score for you. If you are wondering why, it is because it is not at all easy to grade your essay instantaneously.

Think about it. Even on the test day, you will only receive your Math and Verbal scores, but not the AWA score. ETS itself takes about 7-10 days to give you an official report of your AWA score. It is that difficult to assess an essay. Plus, it is required that a human grader reads and grades your essays, if you want an accurate score. Which is obviously impossible if you are taking a practice test at home.

So what can one do? Is there no way to get your AWA essays graded? Well thankfully, there are quite a few options that you can consider. We’ve listed down all the available options, and it is up to you to decide which of them you want to choose.

5 Ways to Get Your AWA Essays Graded

Ets score it now.

The ETS Score It Now, is a great feature available for you to get your essays graded. For a small amount of $13 dollars, the ETS Essay Grader will grade two of your essays. You can submit any two of your essay responses, and the software will get back to you with a graded score of your AWA. Now, for most students around the world, and especially for those from the developing world, $13 is quite a lot of money.

And that is probably the reason why most students don’t even know that such a facility is available. We must agree, that even we at CrunchPrep have never used the service ourselves, or know any student who has, simply because we did not need to. Our expert tutors, on the other hand, have been grading student essays for free for a long time now. But nevertheless, we’re pretty sure that the ETS Score It Now feature will get you an accurate score, because well, it’s ETS who developed it.

And there is one more downside with this feature. The score is all you get, when you submit your essays. No feedback. Now, you would expect that ETS would give you some valuable tips to improve your score, but unfortunately, that $13 you spend is only going to get you a couple of numbers from ETS. So, unless you don’t need feedback, you are really not improving on the essay, and you have money to spend, you should definitely try and consider some other alternatives to this service offered by ETS.

Friends, Family, and Experts

Yes. However unbelievable it might seem, your friends can sometimes help you get better marks. They can help you identify the mistakes you did not find obvious enough, and you also get an outsider’s opinion on your essays, and therefore on your points of view. Now, even though your friends might be untrained, or unaware of the GRE AWA grading system, having a second pair of eyes look at your writing can be really beneficial to finding your flaws. Plus, you receive feedback then and there, right on your face, and it is sometimes the easier way to learn.

But before you let your friends or family judge your essays, you should tell them beforehand that you only had 30 minutes to write your essay, and so they should not expect you to write an award-winning piece. You should also tell them to pay attention to, and then judge you on the following aspects of your essay: structure, logical flow of ideas, and persuasiveness of examples. They should ideally not be looking for impressive words or sentence framing, but it is just an added bonus.

If however, you are too shy to ask your friends or family, try asking an experienced professor at your college, preferably a professor in linguistics or someone who is really good at formal, written English language. These professors not only give you an accurate assessment of your essays, but will also give you valuable insights as to where exactly you can improve your writing skills.

Self-Evaluation

When you don’t have access any professors or wise friends who can help you evaluate your AWA essays, the best option you are left with, is you. Self-evaluation, though most of the time not recommended, can be a really useful option for you. There are hundreds of mock essays on the internet, and with a simple google search, you can get access to various essays for the GRE. Even the ETS website has a few sample answers for essays, and the same questions have sample answers which are purposefully written to mirror a 6.0, or a 5.0 level essay, for example.

So, if you can compare your response with those on the internet, you can roughly estimate whether your answer is closer to the 4.0 or the 5.0 sample. If you can do this a lot of times, you will begin to see a definite pattern, which can help you estimate your average AWA score. Also, most mock essays usually have an explanation at the end, which explain why they have been given their respective scores. This really helps you see if your essay is lacking in similar ways.

This sounds rather difficult, and it actually a really complex and time taking process, which is why you should try and take this approach as a last measure; if you cannot find any other alternative helpful enough.

Internet Strangers

If you are an internet geek, you would probably agree that sometimes, internet strangers are really helpful in nature. There are many GRE forums like Urch , PaGaLGuY , etc, where you will find hundreds, if not thousands, of GRE experts and aspirants, who wouldn’t mind lending a hand. Thousands of GRE aspirants visit these forums every single day, and if you can post your essay and ask for some feedback, more often than not, someone will provide you with the necessary assistance. While this someone may or may not be an expert, it often helps to have a second opinion from someone in your niche.

GMATAWA.com

Alright. We’ve saved the best for the last. GMATAWA.com is probably the most fantastic resource out there, when it comes to grading your essays. It was developed to grade GMAT AWA essays, but rest assured, there’s not much difference between GMAT and GRE AWA essays. The basic structure of essays is the same everywhere, and this website is really helpful in grading your essays.

The grading happens instantaneously, and as soon as you submit your essay, you will receive a composite AWA score, along with various metrics on which your essay has been graded. We, at CrunchPrep, assure you that, other than ETS Score It Now , this is probably the most accurate AWA rater you will see, and you can expect a similar AWA score on your exam as well. So, make full use of this feature, and assess your writing strengths and weaknesses. However, you should remember that the website allows you to grade only 10 essays per email address, so choose wisely which essays you will be sending.

So, those are the five ways that you can get your AWA scores graded. Most often, more than one of the resources mentioned above will definitely be helpful to you. And by the way, remember this: Only two things can make you a better writer – Practice, and Feedback.

Issue Essay vs Argument Essay: 11 Key Differences

The Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) section of the GRE asks you to complete two separate but complimentary writing tasks: The Issue Essay and the Argument Essay. Each task tests your analytical writing skills, including the assessment of your critical thinking skills. Both these essay questions are allotted 30 minutes each and are scored on a scale of 6.0. And those are the only similarities between them both.

There are lots of differences between these two types of AWA essays that a majority of test takers are unfortunately unaware of. It is common to think that since both these are essay questions, there aren’t many differences between them. And most of the errors that students commit in this section are due to the confusions that exist between these two essay types. GRE Issue Essay and GRE Argument Essay are very different in nature, and hence you need different strategies to tackle them. We will go deep into each of these essay questions you will see on the GRE, but for now, remember that the GRE Issue Essay requires you to construct and support your opinions on a particular ‘issue’ that has been given to you, whereas the GRE Argument Essay requires you to validate the authenticity, or the logical correctness of an argument that someone else has constructed, without letting your opinions interfere with the task. Got the difference? Now, let’s move on to the finer details.

Issue Essay vs Argument Essay:

1. your view vs. their view:.

The GRE Issue Essay basically tests your ability to present an argument with your views, and your ability to convince the reader to agree to your point of view. As you can clearly see here, you should include your own views and add valuable points to your response, in order for the reader to be convinced to agree with you. On the other hand, the GRE Argument Essay requires you to completely analyze a brief argument written by another author, and to effectively critique the argument or the author’s point of view, by providing sufficient evidences, and by asking logical questions.

2. General Topic vs. Specific Topic

In an Issue Essay, the debatable topic that has been given to you to analyze, is very general in nature and can be from any field. It hence doesn’t usually require you to have a very deep knowledge of the topic. The issue is simply provided as a statement, and your job is to pick a side, stick to it until the end without fiddling around, and present your points of view, your analysis, and your final conclusions in a suitable manner.

However, in an Argument essay, the author himself already presents a case with his/her supporting evidences in the form of a paragraph. Your job is to see how logical the argument sounds, and check whether this argument is right or not, whether the argument has been made on solid grounds, with sufficient evidences or not. You should then effectively critique the argument, by choosing sides. If you choose to substantiate the author’s point of view, you can cite your own examples to strengthen the points, and if you wish to go against the given point of view, then you must be able to ask comprehensive questions that check the validity of the evidences provided in the argument.

3. Analysis vs. Reasoning:

The directions for answering the Issue and Argument essays are also different. The directions given for an Argument Essay read somewhat like this:

“Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on the assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptions prove unwarranted.”

Or like this:

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion, be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.

And the directions given for an Issue Essay are entirely different from the Argument Essay, and unlike the Argument Essay, the Issue Essay can be accompanied with a varied set of instructions, and there is no one particular direction for you to follow. For example, on the day of your test, you may see any one of the following directions, at the end of the issue:

• Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
• Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.
• Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position.
• Write a response in which you discuss which view more closely aligns with your own position and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should address both of the views presented.
• Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim and the reason on which that claim is based.
• Write a response in which you discuss your views on the policy and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider the possible consequences of implementing the policy and explain how these consequences shape your position.

4. Your Conclusion vs. Their Conclusion:

In an Issue Essay, remember that you must be able to introduce the issue at hand in your own words briefly, using your own conclusion , while in an Argument essay, the given argument must be introduced from the author’s point of view using his own conclusion . This is such an important difference between the two essays, and most students tend to do the opposite more often than not, which is why they end up with average scores. You should always be clear on whose conclusion you are taking into consideration: yours, or the authors. And this depends on whether it is an Issue Essay or an Argument Essay.

5. Reasons vs. Flaws:

The second paragraph in the Issue Essay is where you should be stating the side you have chosen, and also your reasons for standing by it. Whereas in an Argument Essay, the second paragraph begins with the biggest flaw that you have identified in the argument made by the author. You should also discuss how his conclusion made by the author overlooks this major flaw. The flaws in the author’s presented argument must be identified before you start writing your response, which makes it easy for you while critiquing the argument.

6. Real Examples vs. Hypothetical Examples:

In the Issue Essay, the body paragraphs (paragraphs 2, 3, and 4) must definitely involve relevant real world examples that support your chosen claim. Remember that the examples you provide must not only be relevant, but they must be real world, true examples. Which means, you cannot create examples out of thin air, on your own. But, in an Argument essay, you have the flexibility to create your own examples, as long as they are relevant to the given topic, and as long as they efficiently substantiate the argument that you are trying to make. The flaws made by the author that you have identified, must be stated with explanations and solid examples, which can sometimes be fake, as long as they fit the scenario you are trying to explain.

7. Appreciating vs. Questioning:

The conclusion statement in an Issue Essay always involves agreeing with the opposing viewpoint in one or two statements. Even though you might not like agreeing with the opposing viewpoint, you should mention that it can be right in a few instances too. You should do this in order to show your emotional maturity level. But, in an Argument essay, the conclusion statements ends on a note of doubt, where you claim that the argument may have one or more valid points but is otherwise entirely flawed, needs more plausible explanations, and requires more solid examples for it to be valid.

8. Agreeing vs. Disagreeing:

Agreeing to the point of view given in the Issue Essay gives you more points to write, since more often than not, the issue presented to you is a general topic, and there will be few points to go against, while there will be plenty of points to support the given claim in the issue. But we still advise students to go the negative route. We will discuss this later on.

But the scenario is entirely different when it comes to the Argument Essay. The Argument given is deliberately made to sound negative, and since the given argument requires a critical analysis of the presented claims rather than your own perspectives, you can, and hence should, go against the author’s point of view. Since more often than not the author’s point of view will be flawed, you will have lots of points to write, and it becomes easier for you to attack the author’s argument instead of trying to support it.

9. Limitation vs. Liberty:

A very important point you should remember is that in an Argument Essay, you should only prove that the evidences supporting the conclusion are inadequate, not that the conclusion itself is wrong. The conclusion is always right, but you should doubt or question the authenticity of the conclusion, meaning, ask how the author came to such a conclusion without sufficient supporting claims. But it is never wise to say that the conclusion itself is wrong, so you should rather limit yourself to saying that the conclusion needs more evidences. On the other hand, in an Issue essay you have the liberty use anything and everything to support your claim. Because the topic given is very general in nature, you may use any evidences to support your statements, even if they say that the conclusion is wrong.

10. Statement vs. Evidence:

The Issue Essay depends on outside, credible facts, because there are no evidences provided within the issue. The issue question is a simple, generalized statement, and there will be no evidences provided. Which is why you should go search for your own evidences, and decide if you want to support or question the conclusion made by the author. But the Argument Essay already has its own evidences provided within the paragraphs, which you will have to analyze and critique.

11. Two Sides vs. One Claim:

The Issue Essay is always like a two sided coin, presented as a contestable topic with two sides where you have the option to go with the side you can present best. The Argument Essay however does not have two sides for you to choose. It has only one claim which must be analyzed and critiqued.

In the GRE, AWA Section is very important as it shows off your communication skills and writing abilities. Looking out for these common differences between the Issue Essay and the Argument Essay, will help you avoid mistakes and prevent misconceptions. A better understanding of these differences and sufficient practice will help you score high in this section.

7 Major Factors That Boost Your AWA Score

It is important to note that the essay graders are reading your essay in a fairly short amount of time, usually between half a minute to two minutes max. So, rest assured that they are not going over your responses with a fine-toothed comb. Nor do the graders have any rulebook which they have to follow in order to add or subtract points from your overall score. There is no rule that says “subtract .5 points for every 3 grammatical errors in the essay.” Or “Add 1 point for every 5 impressive GRE words used in the essay.”

The graders are there to assess your essay holistically. Which means, they are gauging its overall effectiveness, and then assessing it, as humans. But how do they gauge effectiveness? Are there any metrics that usually have in mind while going through the essays? Yes. Fortunately, there are 7 major factors that that may stand out to a grader and help influence your overall AWA score.

Organization

Organization is given the foremost importance by many graders. And it isn’t that hard to understand why. Essays that are well organized are, in fact, easy to read. That’s important because you don’t want to make the grader’s job any more difficult than it already is. The grader has only a couple of minutes to read your entire essay, and poorly organized essays are hard to follow. This will lead the grader to give you a score lower than you actually deserve. But on the other hand, a well-organized argument is easy to follow. Since the graders are looking at your analytical abilities, it helps if they can follow your argument.

If you organization is unclear, however, then your argument is also likely to come across as unclear. In the next chapters, we will be discussing more about how your essay should be organized in order to get a high score.

Syntactical variety is a very key aspect of writing quality content. Your essays should always have a proper syntax, and you should be using a variety of sentences to make your writing look professional enough to get a perfect score. Syntax is a fancy word for how you organize words into sentences. And you already know how important organization is. You should always try to write clear sentences that are crisp and easy to understand. Unlike what most students believe, you don’t have to use extensive vocabulary, unless they really fit into the scenario. So, save the GRE vocabulary for Text Completion, and write your essays simply yet creatively. Again, you should remember that your grader has to read hundreds of essays on the same day, and they sometimes will not be thrilled to untangle a complex sentence that you have used. So, they naturally skip that sentence and read further. So, it is always better to write clearly and simply than to go for risky propositions and complex sentence structures.

A general finding is that longer essays tend to score higher than their shorter counterparts. This may be attributed to various obvious reasons. First of all, if you have written a pretty long essay, it means that you have a lot of insight into the given topic and you are able to address numerous issues relevant to the discussion. Second, if you can write a 500 word essay coherently within 30 minutes, you will be considered as a voracious writer in general. These are the abilities that are usually likely to impress a grader.

But, make sure that the quality of the essay is maintained throughout the length and breadth of your essay, for, if you don’t maintain quality, you might come off as someone who is just trying to impress but is unable to organize and prioritize their thoughts. Long essays that are clearly organized, use professional language, and contain strong supporting evidences, and give enough reasons to the grader to give you a better score. We’ll soon discuss more on this.

Your essay response should definitely contain quality instances of premises, facts or reasons given to support the conclusion that you are trying to make. Your essay needs to contain some sort of supporting evidence, whether it be logical, statistical, factual, or other forms of justifications. Without proper support, your essay will not be able to effectively develop a firm position on the given argument or issue, and it certainly fails to persuade the reader’s opinion. So, make sure you always look for supporting evidences, and provide them wherever needed.

Like discussed erstwhile, you’re going to have to come up with a lot of examples that help illustrate the point you’re trying to prove, if you want to make your essay stand apart from the rest of the pack. Since test takers have a mere 30 minutes to write these essays and will never know the topic beforehand, the graders are used to seeing a lot of hypothetical examples. And this is completely okay. As long as you make sure that the examples fit the point you are trying to explain, it is completely fine. But the way to make your essay stand out is to use real life examples. I know it is very difficult, but if you are lucky enough to have some background about the given topic, you should try to include an expert opinion within the essay, and if you can, you should try and add relevant facts, statistics, and case studies to your essay.

Although the AWA does not test your grammar skills and the caliber of your writing, if your essay has a lot of grammar errors and spelling errors, it raises a serious red flag in the mind of the graders. This often happens because students tend to think that they can outsmart the grader by using fancy sounding words once in a while. While doing this doesn’t hurt, it is important to remember that you should only use words you actually know. Sometimes, students might not know the exact meaning, or even worse, the spelling of a big word that they heard somewhere, but they still go ahead and use it in a sentence. And obviously, they will be wrong, one way or the other. Now, while spelling is not one of the criteria the graders look for in your essay, nothing gives them a red flag like reading “Sevaral entreprenuers” or “primery hypothesys”. These are regular words used every day, and if you cannot spell them right, your score is bound to go down. Remember that unlike MS Word or other desktop word processors, there is no spell check or grammar check available on the GRE AWA. So, don’t hurt your score by using words whose spellings you don’t know.

The word processor on the GRE is quite basic in nature. You’ll have basic keyboard functions, plus three other features: cut, copy, paste, and undo. And that’s all. No other shortcuts or spell checks or other advanced features like bold and underline. Now, these functions work exactly as they do on your computer. You can cut text from a portion of your essay and paste it in at a different point. Or you can use undo to delete your typing. Use these features and reduce the time you spend on editing your essay. Learn how to use these features, if you are new to them, and practice speed typing at home.

This is really essential in these days of email and text messaging, where most of the younger population use chat language and shortened forms of words like lyk, hw, wat, imma etc. While this form of English is of no good anywhere in your life, it is especially frowned upon by the GRE community. So, if you find yourself using these sort of words in your essay, which has often happened in the past with many students, you will see your score go down suddenly and rapidly. So, it wouldn’t hurt to do a little typing practice at home before test day.

So, those are the seven major factors that help you boost your essay score on the GRE. You should analyze your AWA essays whenever you take a practice test, and see if your essays have all of these.

The 6 Step Process to Conquer GRE Analytical Writing

Here we discuss the step by step process you should implement, if you want to write powerful AWA essays in under 30 minutes and get a 6.0 score. Each of these steps discusses what you should exactly do, so as to make things easier for you on test day. All you need to do is follow these steps during practice, and get these tips into your head without much effort. Though the Issue and Argument Essays are quite similar when it comes to answering, we have given you separate step by step process to ace them both.

AWA Issue Essay:

The Analysis of an Issue essay tests your ability to “explore the complexities of an issue or opinion and, if appropriate, to take a position that is informed by your understanding of those complexities.” What this means is you should properly analyze the given issue and take a strong position: either negative or positive, and then elucidate examples as to why you have chosen that particular side.

The specific directions for the issue essay task are given like this: “In this section, you will need to analyze the issue presented and explain your views on it. There is no “correct” or “best” answer. Instead, you should consider various perspectives as you develop your own position on the issue.”

Before you begin writing your response, you should take a couple of minutes to think about the issue and plan a proper response before you begin writing. This helps you organize your ideas and develop them fully. Make sure to leave sufficient time to reread your response and make any revisions that you think necessary.

Following are the six simple steps that you should follow in the same order, if you want to pen down a powerful AWA Issue essay.

Step 1: Read the Essay

Obviously, this must be your first step. But you don’t just read the essay. You must perform a ‘smart read’. A smart read is where you read the prompt and figure out the central issue, and jot down this issue on your scratch paper, including some of the important concepts from the given topic. This is what more than 95% of students fail to do. Rather than juggling all your thoughts inside your mind, it is a lot easier to pen down whatever you have understood from reading the prompt in your own words.

Your work on this first step gets you grounded for the essay ahead. After reading the given issue, and writing it down in a few concise words, you should be able to understand exactly what the issue is and also what some of the crucial concepts related to that issue are.

Step 2: Brainstorm Reasons and Examples

This is perhaps the most crucial step of all, and this step is also where most of the heavy lifting gets done. Once you know what points you want to prove and what examples you will use to prove that point, writing the essay will be very easy. Half of the duty lies in brainstorming efficient examples and supporting reasons to supplement your point of view. So, make sure you spend adequate time on this step. Pre-planning before you start writing is of the utmost importance, because then, you will have a continuous flow of thought while writing, and there won’t be any wastage of time. If you start writing without thinking through the issue or planning the structure of your essay, you run the risk of wasting time on editing and re-editing your points.

Or even worse, you might reach a dead end and there is no more evidence left with you to substantiate your point of view, but you’ve already spent 20 minutes on the essay that you cannot go back and write a fresh piece. So, it is important that you take the time to brainstorm some examples and then pick a side. After you’ve written down the central issue and the key concepts, you should ideally make a “pro” and “con” list on the scratch paper. Start thinking of reasons for both agreeing with and disagreeing with the given issue. Once you have enough reasons to pick a side, you can move further. You should think about how your personal experiences relate to the issue at hand. Think about things you have observed or experienced in daily life, read about in magazines or newspapers, or even heard about from your family members and friends.

Next, you should be coming up with some examples of your own, that support or illustrate your point of view. Good supporting examples can be the difference between a score of 4.0 and 6.0, so it is worth spending a little time trying to generate them. Don’t spend more than two or three minutes on this part because you can still write a good essay without perfect examples.

Step 3: Pick a Thesis

After you have some reasons and examples for side that you have chosen to go with, you will have to pick a proper thesis based on which you will write your opinion. This is because you don’t have to actually believe the position you write about; sometimes, you may disagree with the issue at hand, but find it easier to come up with examples and reasons for the other side of the argument. So, you need to decide which thesis you are comfortable writing about. Don’t mull over it for minutes together. Just choose whichever thesis allows you to write the strongest essay. In most cases, you find the “con” side easier to argue. You can find a lot of examples that way. And that is completely fine.

Now your thesis needs to state why you believe this position is correct. Take a moment to think about this, and jot your thesis down on your scratch paper. Now you are ready to outline you essay.

Step 4: Outline Your Essay

Don’t start writing your essay altogether. Instead, outline your essay in the direction you want to take. Figure out what you want to write in the introduction, how you want to start off, and how you want to end the conclusion. Then, figure out what you want to write in the body paragraphs. More importantly, you will have to consider how to introduce the opposing side of the argument and how counter it with your point of view. Mentioning the other side of the coin makes the graders think that you are mature enough to have considered the various perspectives on the issue, without going ahead blindly based on intuition.

Step 5: Write Your Response

If you have finished all the previous steps properly and as planned, then this is by far the easiest step of all. All you need to do is write your response in a proper order, something that looks like this:

• Introduction – hook the reader with an amazing intro and state your most important thesis
• Agreeing to the given issue
• Bringing up the negative side of the issue along with supporting facts and quotes
• Building up the negative side further with examples and support

This is the most basic essay outline, and the most famous out there. But you can also follow an unconventional structure and still write a great essay. Some of the other structures that you can follow are:

• Introduction
• First argument for the side you take
• Refute your first take and argue for the opposite side
• Second argument for the side you take
• Refute your take again and argue for the opposite side

This structure allows you to take a neutral step, and hence interweave the arguments for both sides, just like in a debate.

Another structure that can be used in many situations is:

• Argument for your side
• Argument against your side
• Conclusion: evaluate both sides and arrive at thesis

This structure is probably the hardest of all, but has the advantage of being new and uncommon. Graders will definitely appreciate a new structure once in a while, and tend to reward essays that move beyond the norm.

But, the point is, the writing part of the essay should really be the easiest part. Most people who think they have trouble writing actually don’t have difficulty with writing, but they have trouble figuring out what exactly they are trying to say. So if you’ve completed the previous steps, you should know more or less what it is that you want to say about the topic.

Step 6: Proofread

Proofreading is another step that is often neglected, mainly because test takers don’t have the time to. They think they cannot afford to waste one or two minutes proofreading the essay, while they can use the same time to write an additional sentence or two. But as a matter of fact, a perfect 400 word essay gets a higher score than an imperfect 450 word essay. So, you should rather focus on improving what you have already written, and try to spend at least three to four minutes on proofreading what you have written.

Since you don’t have a spell checker on the AWA, you don’t know if you misspelled any word in a hurry. So, be sure to check every single word, and try to refine your essay as much as you can, before the time runs out. Make sure you have all the necessary parts of your essay and the examples you meant to use. Doing these things will clean up the overall appearance of your essay and can only positively affect your score.

AWA Argument Essay

While the Analysis of an Issue task measures your ability to create your own argument, the Analysis of an Argument essay measures your ability to evaluate someone else’s argument. In the words of the test writers, the argument essay tests “your ability to formulate an appropriate and constructive critique of a specific conclusion based upon a specific line of thinking.”

There are two key points in these directions; “evaluate the argument,” and most importantly (it’s so important the directions place it in italics), “do not present your own views on the subject!” Some test takers end up basically writing an analysis of an issue essay when they are supposed to be writing an analysis of an argument essay. Your job here is simply to evaluate and critique the argument presented, not offer your own position on the subject. If you do not answer the question appropriately, you can say goodbye to a good score.

The steps for the Analysis of an Argument essay are somewhat similar to the steps for Analysis of an Issue:

Step 1: Evaluate the Argument

The Analysis of an Argument task presents you with a passage exactly like the passages found on Critical Reasoning questions. Your first task is to break the argument down into its conclusion and premises. Once you have the conclusion and the premises, the next step is to find the assumptions underlying the argument.

Step 2: Brainstorm Assumptions

These arguments are usually full of holes, even more so than Critical Reasoning arguments. You should be able to find two or three major assumptions necessary to make the conclusion work. Look for the common argument patterns: causal, sampling, and analogy. Of course, there may be a lot of assumptions spread around the entire argument, but you only need two or three good assumptions to construct your essay. Now that you have the major assumptions, you can plan the general format of your essay.

Picking a thesis on the argument section is rather easy and involves just one step. Just assume that whatever assumptions that the author has made have no evidences, and go completely negative on that, and prepare a thesis in your mind in that direction.

Once you have laid out the assumptions of the argument, you need to evaluate the strength of these assumptions. Since your task is to evaluate and critique the logic of the argument, you must consider how viable these assumptions are. Generally, the arguments on the GRE are poorly reasoned, so you should basically be looking for reasons the assumptions fail to lead to the conclusion. Think about ways you could weaken and strengthen the argument. A typical essay plan looks like this:

• Introduction: Describe the premise and point out the flaws or state your intention
• Detail first assumption; explain problems with it and how to weaken/strengthen the argument
• Repeat for second assumption
• Repeat for third assumption
• Conclusion: Give final evaluation of the validity of the argument

This is the most basic format for the argument essay, but feel free to make changes as and when you need. You may also use one of the following structures that are less commonly used.

• Introduction: Describe the premises, conclusion, and assumptions of the argument
• Weaken the argument by attacking the assumptions
• Strengthen the argument by bolstering the assumptions
• Conclusion: Present final evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the argument

Another variation goes right to the assumptions in the argument:

• Detail first assumption; explain problems with it and how to weaken/strengthen the argument.
• Repeat the same for second assumption.
• Repeat the same for third assumption.
• Conclusion: Evaluate the strength of the argument based on the assumptions.

Step 5: Write

The writing process on the argument essay is in some ways a little easier than that of the issue essay. Because the focus of this essay is the logic of the argument, there is no need for creative prose. Instead, you are merely presenting the flaws of the given argument in an objective fashion. Your delivery on the argument essay can be straightforward and simple and you can still get a great score, provided your analysis is sound. Following is what each paragraph needs to contain.

Introduction Paragraph

Your introduction paragraph needs to lay out the basic parts of the argument and let the reader know what the purpose of the essay is. Your introduction should have these elements:

• A statement of the conclusion
• A statement of the premises
• A statement of the essay’s purpose

Body Paragraphs

The body paragraphs of an argument essay should describe the assumptions necessary to the argument and then critique them. A good critique should reveal the weaknesses of the assumptions and also show how the argument could be strengthened. Argument essays do not require specific examples and in many cases, specific examples would be inappropriate. Focus instead on dissecting the logic of the given argument. A body paragraph should have the following components:

• A description of an assumption
• An explanation of the weaknesses of the assumption
• An evaluation of the conclusion in light of the assumption

Conclusion Paragraph

The conclusion paragraph of an argument essay doesn’t need to do much, but as with the issue essay, you need to have one. All you have to do is make a final evaluation of the soundness of the argument.

Before you leave your essay, spend one or two minutes proofreading your essay. Make sure you have all the necessary parts of your essay and that your essay is free from grammatical and spelling errors. Correct any typographical errors. Doing these things will clean up the overall appearance of your essay and can only positively affect your score.

Examples and Analyses of Perfect 6.0 AWA Essays

Now that you know how exactly you should structure your AWA essays, it is time to understand what a perfect essay looks like. In this chapter, we will discuss a couple of examples for perfect 6.0 Argument and Issue essays, and we will also analyze the reasons these essays deserve a perfect score. This will give you a basic idea of the various key aspects of the AWA essays that you should include while writing. These essays have been taken from the ETS Essay Pool itself.

Example and Analysis of a Perfect 6.0 Issue Essay

“When someone achieves greatness in any field such as the arts, science, politics, or business that person’s achievements are more important than any of his or her personal faults.”

When individuals attain greatness, their achievements are more important than their personal faults. While historians should not whitewash the personal foibles of great individuals, the impact that these mortals have had in their fields should tower over any personality defects. To focus on the personal weaknesses of great individuals is to miss the importance of their achievements.

The course of human history is decorated with individuals able to rise above their peers and reach the zenith in their fields. These individuals are often the subject of intense scrutiny from contemporaneous skeptics and later historians. But no one can lead an exemplary private life all the time; no human being is able to withstand such surveillance and historical scrutiny without personal faults coming to light. Great individuals are no exception. However, it is misguided to focus on their personal faults rather than their achievements. To do so is to miss the importance of their work, without which our culture would be worse off.

For example, Abraham Lincoln was arguably one of the greatest Presidents the United States has ever had. He managed to bring the country through a substantial revolution and to end slavery despite powerful economic and social forces working against him day and night. However, Lincoln was not a saint. He was moody and prone to depressive funks that disrupted his family life and slowly eroded his marriage. These personal faults did not reduce his success as a President. While we do not have to ignore questions about whether he was a depressive, we also should not consider them an important part of his political heritage. In contrast, many people criticize Lincoln’s decision to suspend the right of habeas corpus. This (presumed) failing is not personal in nature, but relates directly to Lincoln’s work in his field. Criticisms of this sort are entirely relevant, whereas personal criticisms are not.

Another example of a great individual dogged by criticism of his personal conduct is Albert Einstein. Einstein developed a number of the most important theories in modern physics, including an explanation of the photoelectric effect, an explanation of Brownian motion, special and general relativity, and Bose-Einstein quantum statistics. Each one of these theories would have been considered a great life’s work for a scientist; for one man to contribute this much is remarkable. However, Einstein also had life-long problems with infidelity. The fact that he cheated on his wife is in no way relevant to his accomplishments in the field of physics, and indeed most references to Einstein properly ignore it. To focus attention on the faults of his personal life is to obscure the impact he made on history.

Great individuals have personal faults, as all human beings do. Yet it is incorrect to assert that these faults detract from those individuals’ accomplishments. We are better able to appreciate the gravity of great accomplishments when we are not burying our heads in the sand, in search of personal failings.

Explanation:

The essay above deserves a perfect score, because it takes all the 7 major elements that graders look for, as we have already discussed in chapter 3: Clarity, Structure, Sentence Variety, Vocabulary, Grammar, Evidence, and Reasoning.

The thesis provided by the student is very clear and concise. There is no confusion about which side the student took. The issue essay tests how well we can present a position on an issue effectively and persuasively, and this essay passes both the tests.

The piece is also very well organized. The most popularly used structure “intro-body-body-body-conclusion” really works well for this type of an issue, and the student made good use of it. While the response included only two examples as opposed to the suggested three, the two examples presented are extremely strong. President Lincoln is an ideal case study of a leader whose greatness should be not be obscured by his domestic problems. The same can be said with Einstein; his infidelities may have wounded his family emotionally, but his contribution to modern science and technology will be remembered throughout the history of mankind. So, obviously, two of the most historic and the most apt examples were presented by the student here.

Additionally, the conclusion is substantial and does an excellent job of summing up the essay. The student uses a variety of sentences in order to make the conclusion unique, and not sounding too much like the introduction itself. He/She does a great job of restating the introduction paragraph without sounding overly redundant. Lastly, this essay is extremely well-written, and shows the student’s grasp over written English language. The grammar and syntax are almost flawless, and it is hard to write a better essay response to this issue, in under 30 minutes.

These are the reasons why this essay deserves a straight 6.0 score.

Example and Analysis of a Perfect 6.0 Argument Essay

The following appeared in the editorial section of a national news magazine:

“The rating system for electronic games is similar to the movie rating system in that it provides consumers with a quick reference so that they can determine if the subject matter and contents are appropriate. This electronic game rating system is not working because it is self-regulated and the fines for violating the rating system are nominal. As a result an independent body should oversee the game industry and companies that knowingly violate the rating system should be prohibited from releasing a game for two years.”

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. Point out flaws in the argument’s logic and analyze the argument’s underlying assumptions. In addition, evaluate how supporting evidence is used and what evidence might counter the argument’s conclusion. You may also discuss what additional evidence could be used to strengthen the argument or what changes would make the argument more logically sound.

The argument claims that the electronic games rating system, although similar to the movie rating system, is not working because it is self-regulated and violation fines are nominal; Hence, the gaming rating system should be overseen by an independent body. Stated in this way the argument fails to mention several key factors, on the basis of which it could be evaluated. The conclusion relies on assumptions, for which there is no clear evidence. Therefore, the argument is rather weak, unconvincing, and has several flaws.

First, the argument readily assumes that because the electronic game rating system is self-regulated, it is not working well. This statement is a stretch and not substantiated in any way. There are numerous examples in other areas of business or commerce, where the entities are self-regulated and rather successful. For instance, FIA, the Formula1 racing organization is self-regulated. Yet, the sport is very popular and successful, drawing millions of spectators around the world each year. Tickets are rather expensive, races are shown on pay-per-view, and nearly all drivers are paid very well.

Another example is the paralleled movie rating system that the argument mentions. The author fails to clarify whether it is working well, but it is clear that the movie rating system is pretty well received by people, who often base their decisions to go see a movie with kids or not on the movie rating. It has never been a case when someone would feel cheated by the movie rating and express disappointment afterwards. Since the movie rating system is also self-regulated, it follows that this regulatory method is working pretty well and it is not obvious how it can be the reason for the poor electronic game rating system. The argument would have been much clearer if it explicitly gave examples of how the self-regulatory system led to bad ratings and customer dissatisfaction.

Second, the argument claims that any violation fees for bad electronic game ratings are nominal. It thus suggests that this is yet another reason for the rating system not working. This is again a very weak and unsupported claim as the argument does not demonstrate any correlation between the monetary amount of the fines and the quality of the electronic game rating system. In fact, the argument does not even draw a parallel with the mentioned movie rating system and its violation fines. If any such correlation had been shown for the movie rating system, which supposedly works well, then the author would have sounded a bit more convincing. In addition, if the argument provided evidence that low violation fines lead to electronic game manufacturers to ignore any regulations with respect to the game rating system, the argument could have been strengthened even further.

Finally, the argument concludes that an independent body should oversee the game industry and companies that violate the rating system, should be punished. From this statement again, it is not at all clear how an independent regulatory body can do a better job than a self-regulated one. Without supporting evidence and examples from other businesses where independent regulatory bodies have done a great job, one is left with the impression that the claim is more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence. As a result, this conclusion has no legs to stand on.

In summary, the argument is flawed and therefore unconvincing. It could be considerably strengthened if the author clearly mentioned all the relevant facts. In order to assess the merits of a certain situation, it is essential to have full knowledge of all contributing factors.

The piece is also very well organized. The most popularly used structure “intro-body-body-body-conclusion” really works well for this type of an argument, and the student made good use of it. The response included sufficient examples that are pretty solid, and more than satisfy the student’s take. The examples provided are also real-life in nature, as opposed to many hypothetical examples that students write. This gives this essay response quite an edge.

The student uses a variety of sentences in order to make his/her point strong enough to concur with. He/she does a great job of restating the introduction paragraph without sounding overly redundant. All the paragraphs are very well written, and the structure, writing, and vocabulary used by the student shows the student’s grasp over written English language. The grammar and syntax are almost flawless, and it is hard to write a better essay response to this issue, in under 30 minutes.

6 Types of False Reasoning You Should Avoid on the Argument Essay

In order to confuse test takers, the AWA essays will always contain some flawed reasoning or illogical statements. In particular, some of the paragraphs on the AWA Argument essay will contain flawed reasoning, which can appear in many forms. While these forms can potentially be unlimited in number, most of them can be categorized into 6 groups. These are potentially the 6 types of false reasoning that you frequently see on the AWA Argument essays:

• Creating stereotypes. Assuming that characteristics of a group in general apply to each member of that group.
• Assuming that a certain condition is necessary for a certain outcome
• Drawing a weak analogy between two things
• Confusing a cause-effect relationship with a correlation (famously known as post hoc ergo propter hoc, i.e. correlation does not imply causation)
• Relying on inappropriate or potentially unrepresentative statistics
• Relying on biased or tainted data (methods for collecting data must be unbiased and the poll responses must be credible)

Almost all of the argument essays contain more than one of the following flaws, so it is important that you are aware of each and every possible flawed reasoning.

1. The Stereotypical Assumption

We see this happen quite often in our everyday life. People resort to creating stereotypes of a particular person, or a group of people. However, common sense says that it is pretty unrealistic to describe a group and then expect that every single member fulfills the very same characteristics.

For example, saying that ‘Girls are weaker than guys’ or that ‘Asians are geniuses’ is just plain wrong, because in both the cases, the statements are generalized in nature. While both the statements can seem to be true for the most part, we all know that in the real world, some girls are stronger than guys, and that some Asians fail their tests. Which means, one cannot simply make a sweeping statement in either of the aforementioned cases.

Now, you can easily remember this type of false reasoning on the AWA, by relating it to stereotypes. We generally think of stereotypes as harmful because they unfairly limit a certain group to a predefined characteristic that often has little to no evidence. Hence, in order to avoid falling trap to this stereotypical assumption fallacy, you should immediately consider any sentence that generalizes a particular group as plain wrong, and attack that assumption when you are writing your response.

2. The Necessity Assumption:

This is a very frequent type of false reasoning that hides in plain sight. Most students simply cannot identify that this type of reasoning is wrong. The author of an argument usually assumes that a certain condition is necessary to achieve the desired result. This sounds reasonable, but the problem here is, the author simply says that it is necessary to do something to achieve something, and does not provide the necessary evidence which proves that there is no other means of achieving a similar result.

For example, the arguments says that, if students have to perform better in schools, it is necessary that the teachers be more active in the classroom.

Now, this looks like a perfectly logical statement to anyone. But the problem is, the author has not considered whether there are any other ways students can perform better in schools. The author makes a simple statement that outlines only one necessity – the teachers being active – and does not talk about the relevant evidences, or the possibility of other ways to achieve the same result. Of course, there are other factors involved: maybe students can perform better if they study every day at home, or if the school redesigns the curriculum to suit the needs of students, etc. So, you should keep in mind to attack this necessity assumption, and also to include the alternative factors or possibilities.

3. The Illogical Analogy:

Analogy is when someone comes to a conclusion about something on the basis of another thing. For example, if a giant conglomerate has doubled its sales in the last one year because it had spent over $10 million on advertising, then in order for another giant conglomerate to double its sales, it has to spend more than $10 million on advertising.

Now, on the first glance, this might seem like a logical argument. But, if you think about it carefully, it is an illogical analogy that the author has made in order to prove his/her point. The argument may seem sound enough to agree to, but one simply can’t analogize these two scenarios, even though the size of the companies is similar.

First of all, we don’t know if the two companies are based in the same country or not. The demographics in their respective countries may respond to different incentives. And there are several other factors like industry, market size, product quality, support system, target audience, consumer trends, economic situation in the country, etc., that need to be addressed, before the author can make such a comparison. Without this thorough background info, one simply can’t make this analogy, and test takers should hence not fall into such traps.

4. The Correlation – Causation Confusion:

As confusing and bemusing as the title is, this is one of the more frequent fallacies that appear on the AWA argument essays. More famously known as the post hoc fallacy, this is easily one of the most common types of false reasoning you’ll encounter on test day. So it is very important that you master it.

Many arguments try to confuse test takers by arguing that correlation and causation are one and the same. But in fact, they aren’t. There is actually a world of difference between them both. While correlation just means that two events have occurred simultaneously, causation means that one event is the result of another event. Now you understand how different these two are. To illustrate further, let us take this as an example: In the year 2000, Company X released their new computer called Series 5, and that same year, the US witnessed a huge economic recession. Again in 2008, the company released its second computer called Series 6, and the US had undergone another economic recession. So, whenever this company releases a new computer, the economy goes down.

Do you see how illogical it sounds? That is the difference between correlation and causation. The above example shows correlation, and not causation. So, one should be careful enough to understand that just because one event happens after another, it doesn’t mean that the first event caused the other to occur.

5. The Statistical Irrelevance:

You will often find that the AWA arguments cite statistical evidence to support their claims. Now, while we appreciate any kind of statistical data that further bolsters the author’s point of view, we must also be careful to analyze the relevance of the statistical data in a particular scenario.

Sometimes, the argument may cite a statistic according to a survey where a small group of people were asked a question, and based on their views, the author generalized the opinion of the people of the entire city/state/country. For example, if a survey of 1000 people in New York City say that they really need a new park in the city, does it mean that the entire population of the city feel the same? In order to draw a conclusion about anything, a larger sample is required. In order to really identify the voice of the people, the survey should at least include a majority of people in the city. If the population of New York City is 10 million, then the survey should try to include the opinions of at least half that number.

Hence, test takers should keep an eye on statistics mentioned in the arguments made by the author, and try to validate the relevance or significance of the given statistical data.

6. The Data Bias:

Sometimes, even though surveys include a large number of people or a certainly large sample space, it is not enough to conclude that the results obtained from the survey are really true. Biased data is another reason why data can be manipulated with, or tainted easily. For any survey or data to be considered legitimate it has to be collected in an unbiased, fair, and scientific manner.

For example, if a survey was conducted among children in a city, on the question “What is your favorite color?” and the children were given only two options, Blue and Red, one cannot conclude that Red is the most favorite color for the children in the city, even though 83% of the children chose Red. The survey clearly does not ask an open ended question, and is biased towards either Red, or Blue, or both. The survey is designed, consciously or unconsciously, to yield certain desired responses, and this definitely manipulates responses by providing narrow options.

Hence, test takers should question the statistical legitimacy of a survey, and question the author whether the survey or data obtained is scientific and unbiased or not.

Checklist for Argument Essay Task:

Here is a checklist you should use when you practice writing argument essays. Ask yourself these questions to identify the flaws in the given argument.

• Are the facts stated in the argument real or are they just preposterous exaggerations? (Hint: you can always question the source of the information provided in the argument)
• If the argument draws conclusions from any sample statistical data, then is the connection between the data and the conclusion strong?
• Is the sample data taken from the group similar to the other group for which the conclusions were made?
• Is the sample data significant enough?
• Is the provided sample data inconclusive or invalid? Did it exclude other important factors?
• Are the statements mentioned in the argument from an authority on the subject or from individuals trying to voice their concerns/opinions?
• Do you have any real world examples that invalidate the conclusion? (examples from your personal experiences, from articles you read before, from the news or from historical incidents)

Is there anything missing in the argument? Maybe there is really something that should have been mentioned to make the argument more concrete.

How to Finish an Essay in 20 Minutes: 9 Effective Strategies to Save Time on the AWA Section

When it comes to acing any section on the GRE, it all boils down to mastering one key factor – time. Time is the only reason why 99% of the test takers cannot get a perfect score on the GRE, let alone on the AWA. But then, just as pretty much with everything related to the GRE, we at CrunchPrep have cracked the code in order to finish off a brilliantly written essay in under 20 minutes. That’s right, 20 minutes only.

Just as with other sections on the GRE, there are a few time saving strategies that you can adopt on test day, if you want to finish off the AWA section quickly, and still score a perfect 6.0. Here are the 9 most effective time saving strategies that you should implement on test day.

1. Finish off Introduction and Conclusion First

This is an amazing technique that not only saves time for you, but also relieves you of the pressure of writing something in reply. All you have to do is, as soon as you are ready to pen down your response, finish off writing the introduction and the conclusion paragraphs first. Don’t bother touching the other paragraphs yet.

Now you may wonder, how on earth one can write the conclusion part without ever concluding the essay in the first place. Simple. As we have already discussed in the previous chapters, you first outline your essay before you start writing it. So, by the time you are about to start penning down your response, you will have already figured out what you want to write in the introduction, how you want to start off, and how you want to end the conclusion. So, it becomes rather easy for you to get started.

Finish these two very important paragraphs as early as you can, preferably in the first 5 minutes. Now, if you can do this well, you only have three more paragraphs to write, and you have over 20 minutes of time left. You can easily write each paragraph in 5 minutes, and the entire essay will be finished before you know it.

2. Always Be Negative

Even though we asked you to pick a thesis in the previous chapters, you should know that if you want to save time, you will have to try and stay on the negative side. This applies to both the Issue and the Argument essays. If you are wondering why, you should understand how the human brain works when analyzing a controversy. It takes no time for us to point out mistakes in others, while it takes a lot of thinking and courage to appreciate something that is controversial, because our brains are evolutionarily hardwired to stay away from something foreign, in order to protect us. And given the incredibly limited time that you have on your hands, it will be easier for you to criticize the author’s point of view, than to take his/her side.

So, let us go with some prejudice here. Before you even start reading the essay question, you should be in a negative state of mind, and be ready to counter the given essay with lots of criticism. You should believe that whatever the author has written is false, no matter how logical it may seem. This sort of thinking will help you brainstorm the relevant points quickly.

3. Attack the Assumptions

In both the Issue and the Argument essay questions, the author will have made multiple assumptions in order to come to a particular conclusion. It is your job now to attack the very assumption that the author makes. There is no point in attacking mere facts, because we never know if the facts are true or false. Which means, you cannot simply claim that the facts presented are wrong.  But you can always say that the assumption is wrong. So, as soon as you start reading the essay question, figure out where the author has made assumptions, and think about how you can attack them.

4. Don’t Be A Perfectionist

This is a big problem among students today, especially those who really want to get a perfect 6.0 score. Wanting a 6.0 score is okay, but the problem is, these students try to be perfectionists about everything they write. They try to make sure every little thing about their essay response is perfect. Now, while this is a good practice in normal life, you should remember that this will hit you badly on test day. You cannot simply make sure everything you write is perfect, especially when the clock is running after you, and when you are totally stressed out.

A better strategy is to keep writing even though you make mistakes, as once you think you are done with the writing part, then you can start proofreading your copy for mistakes and small errors.

5. Use the Scratch Paper

One of the biggest sins that GRE test takers commit, is that they don’t use the scratch paper to its fullest. Don’t be under the impression that the scratch paper is given only to help you solve quant problems. The scratch paper can be used effectively to score higher on the AWA section too. Use the scratch paper to pen down your thoughts as you are reading the given topic, and also make use of it to outline your essay, and to devise a proper answering strategy.

If you need more details, on how to use the scratch paper on the GRE , we have done a separate post on that. Check out more scratch paper tips and strategies here .

6. Practice Typing

If there is one thing that can help you write a 500-600 word essay in under 20 minutes, it is the ability to type fast. Considering the fact that you will take about 2-3 minutes to read and understand the given question, another 2-3 minutes to figure out what you want to write, and another couple of minutes to outline your essay, you will be left with roughly 20 minutes to write a 600 word essay. Considering the fact that you should save some time to proofread your essay, you should probably be able to type around 600 words in 15 minutes, which means, 200 words every 5 minutes.

Yes, it is possible to type a couple hundred words in 5 minutes, if you already know what you are going to write. Don’t worry about it. 200 words in 5 minutes equals 40 words per minute, which is exactly the global average for typing speed. But still, if you think you can’t type that fast, start practicing today. There are some fantastic free resources like Keybr and TypingWeb available online, that help you learn fast typing.

7. Practice Keyboard Shortcuts

Learning keyboard shortcuts can be really helpful on test day. The word processor on the GRE is quite basic in nature. You’ll have basic keyboard functions, plus three other features: cut, copy, paste, and undo. And that’s all. No other shortcuts or spell checks or other advanced features like bold and underline. Now, these functions work exactly as they do on your computer. You can cut text from a portion of your essay and paste it in at a different point. Or you can use undo (Ctrl + Z) to delete your previous typing. Use these features and reduce the time you spend on editing your essay.

8. Practice! Practice! Practice!

As straightforward as it gets. Just as with the other sections on the GRE, the more you practice writing long essays at home, the higher you score on test day. But there is a catch here: you should practice typing essays on a computer keyboard. This is rather important, because most of us today use laptops and tablet phones to communicate, and the keyboards we normally use differ greatly from those of the desktop computers. You will have to type on a desktop computer keyboard on test day, and it is recommended that you get used to the new keyboard at home itself.

9. Read The Entire AWA Question Pool

We generally don’t recommend this to every student, since most of them don’t have the time to. But if your test is months away from now, it will do you a world of good if you can go through each and every AWA question from the ETS Essay Pool. There are separate question pools for Issue Essays and Argument Essays , and they are not too many in number. You could probably finish them all in a month or two.

Remember that the AWA questions you will see on test day will be from these essay pools only . So, it won’t hurt to check them all out.

Top 101 Transitional Words and Phrases You Should Use to Score a 6.0 on the AWA Section

The difference between a normal essay and a great essay, is the way it is written. Normal essays are lifeless, and they bore readers a few lines into the story. But on the other hand, great essays meticulously use persuasive language, and gain the reader’s attention. In addition to writing compelling reasons and connecting stories, you should also include powerful vocabulary, if you want to get a perfect score. Since a lot of students who take the GRE are non-native speakers, they will not be able to naturally write essays that sound truly professional.

So, here are some of the words and phrases you should be using when you write your AWA essays. You might have seen these words countless times in books, newspapers, or magazines. But it is time for you to include them in your writings, and make your essays sound professional.

Supporting words – for instance, for example, to illustrate, to demonstrate, such as, particularly, specifically, notably

Additional support – moreover, furthermore, in addition, similarly, in the same way, with respect to, as well as

Putting same idea in a different way – in other words, to put it simply, in view of this, with this in mind, to put it differently, that is to say

Opposing words – by contrast, on the other hand, in comparison, on the contrary, instead, though, while, despite, although

Consequential words – as a result, accordingly, thereupon, thence, thus, because, for this reason, in effect

Time indicating words – immediately, formerly, currently, meanwhile, eventually, first, second, finally, previously, henceforth, in due time, subsequently

Certainty words – without doubt, most importantly, indubitably, undoubtedly, needless to say

Comparison words – in comparison, however, likewise, even so, nevertheless, nonetheless, all the same

Positive words – magnificent, grandeur, magnanimous, phenomenal, marvelous, prodigious, formidable, notable, glorious, wonderful, paramount, sublime, flamboyant

Negative words – unfounded, doubtful, questionable, oversimplified, problematic, unconvincing, unacceptable, biased, unreliable, defective, presumptuous, vague, unwarranted, weak

Against the point of view words – one cannot deny that, to be fair, it could be argued that, granted, admittedly, a stark contrast, as contrasted with, on second thoughts

Concluding words – in summary, consequently, hence, in closing, in conclusion, therefore, ultimately, to summarize, on the whole, for the aforementioned reasons

Ultimately, it is the content of the essay that really matters. If you are able to write an astounding essay, you really don’t need any advanced words or phrases. But since it is a herculean task for many students, especially the non-native students, to write a perfectly professional essay in under 30 minutes, it would definitely help if some of these words are included.

But at the same time, students should be careful enough to not simply scatter these words across the essay as they please. These words and phrases should really fit in the context of the essay, and the sentences must smoothly integrate into one another. Hence, refrain from using these words and phrases improperly, and learn when and where to use them in your AWA essay.

27 Mistakes You Should Avoid When Writing Your AWA Essays

Until now, we have discussed numerous techniques and strategies to score a perfect 6.0 on the AWA section. But, we think it would be beneficial if you have all the probable mistakes at one place, so you can safely avoid them all at once. Here are the 27 mistakes that you should strictly avoid while writing your AWA essays. Now, some of these points may sound repetitive since we have already discussed a lot up until now, but think of this as a checklist that can help you figure out the danger zones and possible pitfalls.

1. Writing a cliché ridden essay

While using cliché phrases and sentences may seem like an idea choice for anyone writing an essay, it would more often than not be detrimental to someone writing the GRE. Understanding the fact that hundreds of thousands of students write the same essays every year, you should try and be a bit different, a bit unique. Using the same examples that everyone uses really won’t help you much, because it only looks like you have lifted those lines from someone else’s passage or an online journal. So, try to use your own examples, and your own sentences while writing the AWA essays.

2. Not citing the original author

Sometimes, it would really help if you can use a killer essay quote or two, in your AWA essays. But it is important to remember that you should cite the original author, lest there is chance that you might come off as pretentious. Whenever you are quoting someone’s lines, it is customary to give them the credit. Doing this will not only reinforce your image as a trustworthy individual, but also gives the grader an impression that you are an intellectual person. After all, only uber-smart people can remember great quotes along with their authors’ names.

3. Writing mixed-up paragraphs

If you remember what we discussed about writing and organization in the previous chapters, you should recollect the fact that you must allocate separate paragraphs for every idea or point that you are writing about. Often times, test takers tend to stuff a paragraph with two or three ideas, and end up mixing it up pretty badly. This can often cause confusion, not only to the grader, but also to you. Discussing more than one point in a single paragraph is not at all recommended. Dumping all ideas into a single paragraph is a very bad idea, and shows poor organization. So, make it a point to not mix up paragraphs.

4. Giving away too much in the intro

The most important aspect about writing an article or an essay is to avoid giving away too much information in the very beginning itself. Don’t believe us? Ask any content marketer. The key to writing exceptional essays is to keep the reader intrigued until the last word. This is one of the reasons why we hate our textbooks but love fiction novels: the latter simply keep you interested until the end. So, you might want to implement the same strategy when writing your essays. Do not give away too many key points, or at least your main idea, in the first paragraph itself. There are separate paragraph for that.

5. Using irrelevant examples

Just as we already discussed multiple times throughout this guide, avoid using irrelevant examples as much as you can. Sometimes it is fine to make up your own examples, but remember that they should be very relevant to the rest of the essay. So, as much as you can, try and come up with strong and concrete examples to support your point of view.

6. Not summarizing effectively

One of the more overlooked mistakes in writing is that many test takers tend to not summarize their essays properly. A perfect conclusion paragraph not only includes the main idea or point of view that you chose to side with, but also has a neat summary of all the points that have already been discussed in the previous paragraphs. Now, this doesn’t mean you need to write them all over again, but a quick conclusive line about each paragraph would do you a world of good.

7. Introducing new points in the conclusion

Yes, this happens quite often, and is one of the major reasons why many are not getting close to that perfect AWA score. Sometimes, you finish off writing the entire body of the essay, and move on to the conclusion paragraph. As you are writing it, you are struck with a new point or an idea that you think should be on the essay at all costs. So, what do you do? You somehow try to fit that point somewhere in the conclusion paragraph, and you think it will add to your existing robust set of points. But guess what? You haven’t backed it up properly anywhere in the essay, and hence the entire point sounds irrelevant or insufficient at that point of time. So, avoid introducing new ideas or points in the last paragraph. Be content with what you have already written.

8. Writing immediately

If you have read the previous chapters thoroughly, you would understand that there is a step by step process that you need to follow in order to get closer to the 6.0 score. But, a majority of the students give in to the temporal pressure, and start off writing as soon as they read the question. This will only lead to chaos in the next few minutes, as you will find your head clogged with ideas. So, give it a minute or two, and think about what you are going to write, before you start typing.

9. Not ideating correctly

A poorly presented idea is as good as an idea not presented at all. Whatever point it is that you are trying to make, you should make it correctly. An improper presentation, or a poorly organized idea will only make your essay sound more amateur that anything else.

10. Taking too much time for ideation

As straightforward as it can it, time is the most valuable resource on the GRE. Taking too much time just to gather ideas is not at all good for your score. Almost all the essays you will see on the GRE are quite simple to criticize, and anyone with decent practice can crack the code easily. So, in order to avoid wasting too much time trying to ideate, you should do a bit of practice at home.

11. Not sticking to one side

We’ve already said it out: Go negative! There is no way an average GRE test taker can write a perfectly balanced essay response in under 30 minutes, which is why most of them tend to sway towards a particular side. You should follow suit, if you want to score higher on the AWA section. Not sticking to any one of the sides shows that you are too afraid to stand your ground, or that you are too confused to pick a side. Neither of this is a good image for you, so always pick a side no matter what.

12. Not using templates/structure

There are a few basic structures for writing the AWA, and adopting them would be a good idea, since you don’t have to reinvent the wheel all over again. We have already done most of the hard work for you, and provided some basic structures and templates that you can easily follow. If you can’t make good use of them, at least try to create your own organization or structure. Otherwise, your essay response ends up being too clumsy to understand.

13. Not being specific enough

Whichever side you choose to take, or whatever point you are trying to make, be specific. Never try to beat around the bush and expect to get away with. You are not a politician. Never use vague statements that only lead the grader to more confusion.  Be very specific about your opinions, and have a clear idea of what exactly you are going to write, even if it might sound a bit negative, or a bit harsh on the author.

14. Using complex words just for the sake of using

To paraphrase Maya Angelou’s epic quote, ‘You should use a word only if you know what it exactly means.’ Keep this in mind at all times. Do not use a word just for the sake of using, and end up sounding like a novice writer who is trying to impress people he doesn’t know. Instead, use nice little words that sound simple and professional enough to get you a good score.

15. Not using transitional words

Your essay should read like a story. Every paragraph that you write should have a smooth beginning and a smooth ending, thus making the entire essay readable. This can only happen when you use transitional words and phrases that are like bridges linking one paragraph with another. Not using transitional words can make your prompt sound abrupt and hence, not perfect.

16. Not sounding confident enough

Whether it is an Issue essay or an Argument essay, you are asked to give your opinion. Which means, you are entitled to write whatever it is that you have in mind. Nobody is going to argue, or disagree with you, so there is no need to get defensive at all. Using words such as ‘I think’, ‘in my opinion’, ‘perhaps’, ‘Maybe’, etc., will give the reader the impression that you are not confident enough to put your ideas forth. So, be more confident, and more authoritative when you are writing your opinions. Write like an expert editor of a newspaper, not like a newly recruited intern.

17. Using the word ‘I’ very often

While it is perfectly alright to sound like an expert, it is not alright to sound narcissistic and repetitive. A lot of students use the word ‘I’ way too often that it puts the reader off. Yes, everybody already knows that it is you who wrote the essay and that all the ideas presented in the essay are yours. There is no point in saying ‘I think this’, or ‘I would do that’ etc. A few times is fine, but too many times isn’t welcome at all.

18. Using the same sentence structure over and over again

If you remember what we said earlier, sentence variety is as important as anything else. Using monotonous sentence structures or repetitive phrases throughout the essay is a pretty bad idea, since it tells the reader that you, as a writer, lack variety, or creativity. So, try to rephrase the same sentences and write something else that means the same. Like many other things in life, this comes with a lot of practice.

19. Not including a counter argument

Agreeing with the author to some extent will give the grader a great impression about you as a writer, but if you keep on agreeing with the author’s points of view, without including any new information from your side, you will surely come off as someone without any knowledge about the given subject. Given the fact that almost all essays come from a wide range of topics, and that they don’t need any special prior knowledge, it would be bad if you cannot counter the author’s deliberately wrong point of view along with your two cents.

20. Contradicting yourself

With so many arguments and counter arguments clogged inside your mind, and with the speeding clock on the screen, it is possible that you somehow contradict your own argument. Sometimes, when writing the third or the fourth paragraphs, test takers contradict their own opinions or points of view that they put forward in the first one or two paragraphs. This clearly shows that you get confused easily. So, don’t contradict your own statements, and always read what you have written.

21. Letting writer’s block take over your AWA

Writer’s block is when an author loses the ability to write something new. This has happened to the greatest of writers, and will probably happen to you too, if you don’t practice well enough before the test. If you are someone who is not used to writing a lot, then should start practicing for the AWA, unless you want to end up staring at the screen pondering how to begin the essay.

22. Affecting other sections due to mistakes in AWA

Also you already know, you will face the AWA section first. Don’t let the AWA section set the tone for the rest of the test. Sometimes AWA goes great, and you’ll feel extremely confident (or overconfident) about the remaining sections. Sometimes, you may not do well on the AWA and feel gusted about yourself, which affects the other sections. So, try to stay unaffected by the result. Remember; you are the one who sets the tone, not a couple of essay questions.

23. Focusing a lot on grammar and vocabulary

Even though grammar and vocabulary are really important when it comes to scoring higher on the AWA, you should not overstress their importance. Write whatever you can and as much as you can. Do not bother about silly grammatical errors or workaday vocabulary. Once you think you are done with writing, then go back and read everything, correct those grammatical mistakes, or replace those boring words with good vocabulary. But, do it only once you are done with the essay.

24. Writing unnecessarily long sentences

Mark Twain once said ‘If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.’ That shows how difficult it is to write short and concise sentences. Anybody can write long gibberish in a short time, but it takes lots of practice, time and talent to keep it simple. Now, even though you are not blessed with a lot of time during the GRE test, you should try to minimize your sentences to make them sound smarter. Don’t try to use filler words or phrases so you could increase the word count. Quality trumps quantity any day.

25. Using slang language.

Writing as if you are chatting with a friend is something that happens quite often during exams. Using chat language and shortened forms of words like u, hw, y, etc. is bound to happen, especially if you are not very adept at writing often. If however, you find yourself using these sort of words in your essay, your chances of getting a good AWA score will rapidly decrease. So, it wouldn’t hurt to do a bit of practice at home before test day.

26. Attacking the issue task as if it’s an argument

Or vice versa. It is possible to get confused between an issue essay and an argument and test takers often mistake one for the other. This could be the gravest mistake you will ever make on the AWA section, because if you cannot understand whether the given question is an Issue or an Argument task, then you cannot write a proper response at all. So, make sure you don’t get confused between the two essay formats or structures, and that you have a clear understanding of both the question types.

27. Not leaving time for proofreading

Proofreading is often neglected because test takers simply don’t have the time. They think they cannot afford to waste one or two minutes proofreading the essay, while they can use the same time to write an additional sentence or two. But as a matter of fact, a perfect 400 word essay gets a higher score than an imperfect 450 word essay. So, you should rather focus on improving what you have already written, and try to spend at least three to four minutes on proofreading what you have written.

So, this is the most comprehensive list of mistakes that you can avoid on the AWA section of the GRE. With this, we come to the end of this ultimate guide. And if this were any other guide, we would have finished it here. But since this is an advanced guide for the AWA, we would like to give you something special. Something that is exclusive to only you. In our bonus chapter, we would like to give you a bonus: A couple of super-secret templates that you can use, if you want to speed up your AWA preparation.

Bonus Chapter – Mind-Blowing Templates to Score a 6.0 on the AWA Section

This bonus chapter includes mind boggling AWA Essay templates that will get you a sure shot 6.0 score. We have created these templates after examining several hundreds of AWA essays and responses from students across the world. This chapter contains both AWA Issue Essay Template and AWA Argument Essay Template separately. Using these templates will get you guaranteed results, and you will see a perfect 6.0 score on your own essays, guaranteed.

NOTE: But wait! Just because we have given you a couple of templates, it doesn’t mean that you just copy the same content during your actual GRE test. Remember, this website gets thousands of visitors every day, and if every single one of you use the same template, very soon, all your AWA scores will be cancelled and your essay response will be held for plagiarism. We definitely don’t want that to happen, do we? So, better be careful.

We strongly advise you to use these templates as frameworks, and use them to create your own templates for both the essay questions. The templates provided here are just for reference, and it will only help you if you create similar templates for yourself, rather than using the ones given here.

Download the AWA essay template right now!

So, that’s about it. We have come to an end of this epic guide to ace the analytical writing section on the GRE. We have discussed about 71 invaluable strategies that you could use to improve your writing skills, and thereby get a perfect score on the AWA section.

This is by far the most comprehensive GRE Analytical Writing guide in the world. It was created to help you ace the Analytical Writing section in the GRE. If you think this is very helpful, or if you really loved it, share it with your friends right now! Our goal is to help as many students as we can. So what are you waiting for? Go share or tweet the living daylights out of this guide!

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GRE For High Scorers, Part 6: GRE Issue Essays

Vince's 2 main options to help you with your GRE prep are  HERE .

Vince's GRE Issue Essay Template

VIDEO: Watch me brainstorm a real issue essay prompt for an example of the Issue Essay template I describe in the below article.

In this article, I'll talk about my favorite template for writing a high-scoring Issue Essay. These tips will work best for you if you're a good writer; however, anyone can benefit from them.

First, here are two to-dos for you:

Action item #1: Read all sample essays and commentary in The Official Guide , as well as those in the  Verbal Practice book. These are great models for your writing since you can see what the ETS graders reward. Pay very close attention to the grader commentary.

Action item #2 :  Read and brainstorm two official  Issue Essay  prompts every time you study.

Bonus: learn more new words with my GRE vocabulary flashcards app !

Ok, assuming you've gotten started on the above, I want to give you some insight about what you need to do to get a 6.

GRE Issue Essay Example That Received A Perfect Score

You may notice that many Issue Essay prompts make statements that are difficult to fully support. The example and response I want to use first is this one about technology (link is to the full sample essay on the GRE's website). Go ahead and read the prompt, then read the "6" response just below it. Now, let's think about its statement:

As people rely more and more on technology to solve problems, the ability of humans to think for themselves will surely deteriorate.

Notice that this statement - like many Issue statements - would be difficult to agree with 100% of the time. Good responses will acknowledge the complexity of the issue and respond in an insightful way to that complexity. This response does that partly by discussing the reasoning that might be used by someone who agrees with the statement (in paragraph 2):

The statement attempts to bridge these dramatic changes to a reduction in the ability for humans to think for themselves. The assumption is that an increased reliance on technology negates the need for people to think creatively to solve previous quandaries. Looking back at the introduction, one could argue that without a car, computer, or mobile phone, the hypothetical worker would need to find alternate methods of transport, information processing and communication. Technology short circuits this thinking by making the problems obsolete.

Good writers often begin this way - they talk about their opponents' views, then respond with their own . This provides context and a framework for their argument. Writing a persuasive essay without addressing the reasoning of other points-of-view is like pretending your point-of-view exists in a vacuum with no one to challenge it.

Now let's look at a paragraph that continues to acknowledge the complexity of the issue in an insightful way (paragraph 3):

However, this reliance on technology does not necessarily preclude the creativity that marks the human species. The prior examples reveal that technology allows for convenience. The car, computer and phone all release additional time for people to live more efficiently. This efficiency does not preclude the need for humans to think for themselves. In fact, technology frees humanity to not only tackle new problems, but may itself create new issues that did not exist without technology. For example, the proliferation of automobiles has introduced a need for fuel conservation on a global scale. With increasing energy demands from emerging markets, global warming becomes a concern inconceivable to the horse-and-buggy generation. Likewise dependence on oil has created nation-states that are not dependent on taxation, allowing ruling parties to oppress minority groups such as women. Solutions to these complex problems require the unfettered imaginations of maverick scientists and politicians.

I like this paragraph a lot because not only does the author make an insightful point that technology gives people more time to think, but that technology itself creates problems that require thinking. This is a step up from what I think the average writer might do - just cite an example of technology that helps us think or that we need to think to use. Now, you don't always need this level of insight, but it's a good example of what might separate a 6 from a 5. Compelling reasoning and depth of thought are rewarded.

I also like that this essay creates a critical context with the first paragraph, defining the scope of what it's going to discuss. It's the one I most talk about if a higher-scoring student wants some kind of GRE issue essay template, too. It's nice to have a go-to structure when you've only got 29 minutes and 37 seconds and the clock is relentlessly ticking...

Another example I like in the Verbal Reasoning Practice Book is the 6 essay response to a prompt about "People should obey just laws and disobey unjust laws". The author spends some time questioning the context to apply "just" - i.e., what is more important, being just to the individual or just to society? The author also questions how to define "just": if a society is brainwashed, can "just" have any meaning? I like this approach, since, again, it acknowledges the complexity and complications of forming a position on that issue.

How To Effectively Choose And Use Examples In The Issue Essay

Many of my students find it difficult at first to think of relevant examples to support the arguments they make when writing the GRE issue essay. In this section, I’ll give you one of my favorite GRE essay tips: how to choose strong examples. Again, just so we have some context, here’s a sample Issue essay prompt: “Employees at all levels of a corporation should be involved in that corporation’s short and long term goal planning.” Now, one trap I want you to avoid falling into is thinking you have to have specialized knowledge of the topic. You might say to yourself that you’ve never worked for a corporation and that you don’t know how corporations typically plan. The good news is that you can still write a good essay about the topic using what you do know.

For example, let’s say you mostly agree with the statement and wanted to think of an example you could use. You could use an example from real life – perhaps you could talk about how employees at Google are encouraged to use 20% of their time to work on projects they think will benefit the company. Even if you couldn’t think of a real life example, you might use a hypothetical example and talk about how if an airline asked all employees about its plans for the future, flight attendants might provide unique insights into what customers like and don’t like . One strategy I like to recommend is to instead of thinking of what the perfect GRE issue essay examples might be, think about what you know well and see if it could fit. This will encourage you to choose examples you know well, making it easier to write insightfully about them. It might be a good idea to make a list of your personal “go-to” topics – things you can easily talk or write about. You’ll find that you can use many of them for many essays – don’t let the first thing that comes to mind box you in. Essay topics are designed so that almost anyone can write about them. For example, I love reading  The Economist . Since I read it every week, I usually have been thinking about some current events that I can apply to many Issue topics. Also, reading like this builds up a storehouse of information that you can dip into, making it increasingly likely you'll be inspired when a random topic pops up on the screen.

How Long Should GRE Essays Be?

In general, the more you write, the better. 500-600 words is a good goal for most people, but write more if you can!

Good writers tend to illustrate and explain well, which equals more words. If your essay paragraphs seem short, try explain why more and writing more detailed "for example" sentences. Your reader will find your argument more compelling, and the GRE computer algorithm* that contributes half of your essay score will reward you as well!

*Yeah - if you didn't know, both a robot and a human read and grade your essay, and your score will be the average of their scores. :)

How Do I Improve My Issue Essay Score?

Remember, the GRE issue essay examples you choose matter, but they must be used skillfully. Practice brainstorming lots of different essay prompts from the ETS website to get used to coming up with examples that you can use to support your point of view.

Improving your score generally will mean improving one of these five grading criteria:

• How compelling is your argument?
• The examples that support your point
• Organization / transitions
• Using standard written English

In my experience, the GRE's analytical writing assessment is the one part of the test that students tend to under-prepare for. No matter how you prepare for the essay, make sure that you at least write a few before you actually take the real GRE.

P.S. I can help you with your essays, but I will charge you for my time. If you don't want to work with me personally, you can ask for feedback on Reddit ( r/GRE ) - it's the most popular and active GRE forum I know of.

(Reddit is nerdy but also useful.)

Final Issue Essay Thoughts

Check out all the 6 responses in the ETS books (there are five "6" responses for the Issue task, and five for the Argument task). These will give you more ideas about what the highest-scoring essays do. Just keep in mind that these are paradigms of "6" responses... you don't always have to be that good to earn a "6". Again, I think one of the most valuable things you can do is to find an essay structure you like and create your own issue essay template out of it, so you have a "go-to" structure on test day.

If you enjoyed this free guide, check out Vince's other free GRE resources .

And, speaking of writing stuff, our graduate school admissions essay expert, Lauren Hammond, can help you write your personal statement !

Testimonial: "I wanted to improve my analytical writing score for the GRE and decided, with one week left before the test, that I should consult an expert for some last minute advice. Vince was awesome and provided me with so much feedback on the sample essays I sent to him. I ended up getting the score I needed, and I know meeting with Vince made that possible! Thanks again!" - Cayleen Harty

How Long Should a GRE Essay be?

Usually, if someone is asked what they got on the GRE, it’s normal to address your Verbal and Quantitative score . If written out, some people won’t even take the time to write something along the lines of “156 Verbal, 158 Quantitative.” They will simply use V and Q to denote the sections . Many test-takers tend to overlook and be underprepared for the essay portion of the exam. However, you can bet your bottom dollar that graduate and MBA programs will be looking at your essay score . 

I will admit that it is not uncommon for graduate and MBA programs to primarily focus on the Verbal and Quantitative scores of the GRE. With that said, having a strong essay score can help give your application a competitive edge. In this article we will discuss what the GRE Essay prompts are, how the measure is scored, and tips on writing a solid response, including how long the GRE essay should be. 

The GRE Essay Section

The GRE will kick off with the Analytical Writing section, where you will have one hour to write two essays. You will be given thirty minutes to write each one. Hence, you cannot choose to use forty minutes of your one hour on the first essay and twenty minutes on your second essay. Once the thirty minutes is up, you will be taken to the second essay prompt, even if you are in the middle of typing out a sentence. 

Furthermore, the thirty minutes will not start once you begin typing. You will have to read the prompt, plan out your essay, write your essay, and proofread your essay all in thirty minutes. It is stressful. Test-takers who go in unprepared can find themselves starting off the GRE extremely flustered, which does not set them up for success for the rest of the exam. 

The GRE Essay Scoring 

Some of you might know that if you take the computer-delivered GRE, which almost all of you will, you can choose to “Report Your Scores” after your exam ends. At this time, the computer will display your Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning scores right then and there. However, due to how the Analytical Writing measure is scored, you will not be able to see how you did on your essays until your official score report is released about two weeks later.

Each essay will be scored by a human reader along with a computer system, known as the E-Rater. ETS created the E-Rater in order to scan your essay and look for a variance in sentence structure, vocabulary used, overall length, and format which it can then use to identify your writing proficiency. The E-Rater will give your essay a score ranging from zero to six. The human reader will also provide a score within the same range. 

If the human reader and E-Rater both give your essay a similar score, the average of their two scores becomes that essay’s score. If the scores given were very different, a second human reader will read your essay and grade it from zero to six. In this case, your final score for that essay will be the average of the two human readers scores. 

At this point, your two essays that now have scores ranging from zero to six will be averaged to create your official Analytical Writing section score. This score will also range from zero to six in half-point increments. 

The GRE Essay Prompts

The Analytical Writing measure is composed of two tasks: Analyze an Issue and Analyze an Argument. 

The Issue task will broadly speak to an issue and provide instructions on how to respond to that issue. This essay is probably the most similar to what you have done in school. You will need to consider the issue from multiple points of view and then take a stance on the topic. You will need to demonstrate your critical reasoning skills by using logical examples to support your claim. 

The Argument task will not ask you to build an argument but to evaluate an argument provided to you. You will not be asked to state whether or not you agree or disagree with the argument made. If you do, it is likely you will receive a low score. Instead, you will need to address the logical solidity of the argument. In other words, what parts of the argument need to be evaluated more and why. 

How Long Should a GRE Essay Be?

There is no official length requirement for the GRE essays. For example, if your essay is three paragraphs you will not automatically receive a score of zero or one. Similarly, a six paragraph essay will not automatically receive a score of five. The logical evaluation you provide is more important than length, but it will be hard to write a fully developed analysis of the argument and issue tasks in three paragraphs. 

You should aim to have each essay be five paragraphs and roughly five hundred words (give or take). Your five paragraphs should consist of the following:

• Introduction
• Body Paragraph 1
• Body Paragraph 2
• Body Paragraph 3

For an in-depth explanation of how to structure each paragraph, check out our article “How to Write a GRE Essay.” 

Tips for Writing a Good GRE Essay

Table of Contents

1. Practice 

When it comes to practicing for the GRE, it is not uncommon to practice everything but the timed essays. At the test prep company I work for, we have a saying that “smooth is fast.” If you want your Analytical Writing section to go smoothly, which will lead to you maneuvering through the section quickly, you must be willing to practice. Let me tell you, it is a terrible feeling to have the clock run out as you are in the middle of typing out a sentence on test day. 

Practicing will allow you to build up a great familiarity with the structure of the essay prompts. How ETS asks you to respond to the Issue and Argument will always be the same. Furthermore, you will get very comfortable with the basic outline of your essays (i.e. how you put together your intro, body paragraphs, and conclusions). Metaphorically, it will be like playing “Hide-and-Go-Seek” in your own home versus someone else’s home on test day. 

Hence, when taking the POWERPREP exams on your ETS account, do not skip over the Analytical Writing sections. Also, read through all the example essays provided by ETS in the Official GRE Verbal Reasoning Guide and reflect on how they were put together. For other writing resources, check out this list of the best GRE prep books , including those that provide essay practice.

2. Take the Time to Plan

On test day, take a few minutes to plan out your essay before you start typing away. Often, we feel so pressed for time we immediately dive into our introduction paragraph before using our scratch paper to create a basic outline. Trust me, time spent doing this is well worth the effort.

Students who do not spend time drafting their essays before they start typing tend to end up with jumbled ideas that have no concrete focus. You must think about what you want to say as a whole and ask yourself the most basic question, “Does it make sense?” Starting to write early on may lead to a longer essay, but if it does not logically flow the amount of words will do little to increase your score.

3. Prepare Examples

When seeking out any test prep expert’s advise on the Analytical Writing section, they will emphasize the importance of the examples you use. You want your examples to be very specific. They can come from history, literature, olympic sports, pop culture, politics, personal examples, current events, and so on. Feel free to be creative with your examples as well! 

Personally, I think current events are wonderful to draw from, and by using them you are demonstrating that you care about society and have opinions on how to improve it (something graduate schools are looking for from applicants). I tell my students to watch the news or read The Economis t for two weeks leading up to their test day. Take the time to really reflect on a couple events and develop an opinion about them. 

4. Analyze and Then Analyze Some More

It is not enough to have specific examples written throughout your body paragraphs that demonstrate your expertise if they do not truly support your claim. Many test-takers write the introduction to their body paragraph, follow it up with examples, and then conclude the paragraph. They write zero analysis explaining HOW the examples support their thesis. 

Not only do you need to have sentences dedicated to analyzing your examples, the amount of these sentences should exceed the amount of example sentences. Remember, your number one goal is to show the reader you are an analytical person and can think deeply (hence, “Analytical” Writing measure). 

How Long Should a GRE Essay Be? Summary

The Analytical Writing section will give you one hour to write two essays. One will require you to address the soundness of an argument and the other will ask you to create your own argument based off a given issue. Although there is no official length requirement for the GRE essays, you will still want to make them five paragraphs and aim for five hundred words. For general GRE studying resources, check out our list of the best GRE prep courses .

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GRE Timing Tips: How Long is the GRE?

The GRE clocks in at 3 hours, 45 minutes. The GRE consists of six sections with a 10 minute break after the third section. Here’s how you can expect to spend your time on test day. 

GRE Test Day Timeline

*If your experimental section is math, your test will be five minutes longer than someone whose experimental section is verbal.

Biographical Information

The first section of the test collects all of your biographical information. If you fill this out, you will start getting mail from programs that have bought your name from ETS . If you don’t want them to sell your name, or you don’t want to spend the time answering their questions, you can click on a box that tells ETS not to share your information.

The scored part of the GRE begins with two back-to-back essays. For the Issue Essay, you’ll make a compelling case for your position on a topic and then analyze the logical soundness of another author’s argument for the Argument Essay. You have 30 minutes for each. Get a preview of what you'll face with these sample GRE essay prompts .

Multiple-Choice Sections

You'll complete five multiple-choice sections, but only four will count. The fifth is an “experimental” section.  Keep in mind that the math, verbal, and experimental sections may appear in any order. At the end of the exam, you will know, based on the number of math or verbal sections, if the experimental section was math or verbal, but you will not know which section will not count toward your score.

Read More: How to Study for the GRE

You are given 1 minute between sections except for the second multiple-choice section, when you get a 10-minute break. When tackling practice tests during your test preparation, be sure to mimic the real GRE and give yourself these timed breaks just like the real thing.

Research Section

At the end of the test, you may also have an unscored research section that will be used only to help develop and test questions for the GRE. If you want to skip it, you have the option of skipping it. 

Cancelling/Accepting Your GRE Scores

Before you see your GRE scores , you will be given the opportunity to cancel. But it usually doesn't make sense to cancel your scores.  Most people believe they are doing worse while taking test then they actually are. If you cancel, you will never see your scores and you will have to go through the whole experience again. Plus, you can always make use of GRE ScoreSelect®, which allows you to select which scores get sent to which schools.

GRE Timing Tips

Any timed test will cause at least some level of stress. Try these GRE timing tips to stay confident on test day.

1. Accuracy is better than speed.

Slow down and focus on accumulating as many points as possible. Pushing yourself to work faster results in careless errors and lower scores. Don’t let that clock force you to make silly mistakes!

2. Take it all in.

Correctly answer the questions you know you can get right. This means it’s important to allow yourself to see every question. After all, question 20 could be the easiest one on the test for you.

Read More: GRE Verbal Practice: Questions & Explanations

3. Mark and move on.

If a question is not coming to you immediately, it is not necessarily something that you cannot answer. On the Reading Comprehension questions, for instance, you may struggle on a question that deals with the main idea of the passage. You may even have eliminated some answer choices. Don’t give up yet! If you have invested time and work on a particular question, press the Mark button and move on.

4. Try another question if you're stuck.

When you get stuck on a GRE math question , walk away. Do a few other problems to distract your brain, and then return to the question that was giving you problems

Practice for the GRE

Take a GRE practice test with us under the same conditions as the real thing. You'll get a personalized score report highlighting your strengths and areas of improvement.

Start a Free Practice Test

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How Long Should GRE Essays Be?

For those about to sit for the GRE, the topmost question on your mind now will be “How long should my GRE essays be?” There is no straightforward answer to this question, and even the ETS has remained tight-lipped about this. Because there is no particular word length, this section tends to fluster a lot of sitters.

You already know the essay is divided into two parts, and one hour would be allocated for the two parts; that’s about thirty minutes for each one. When writing an essay, we are always tempted to write a lengthy one because we feel longer is better. You are not wrong. But keep in mind that you have thirty minutes for each part, I don’t think there is anyone who can write a perfect lengthy essay under pressure in 30 minutes, they will surely sacrifice the quality.

You don’t want to be stuck up on length. Your essay needs quality to earn you the coveted “6” point. To balance everything out, your essay should be about five paragraphs long. For the introduction, the body and the conclusion. This would enable you to spread your ideas evenly among these sections; thereby increasing the overall quality of your essays.

It would also enable the grader to grasp the outline of your essay without having to read large blocks of texts. Your paragraph length also matters; it should not be overly long as this would make it tiring to read. With that being said, your overall essay should be about 500 to 600 words in length.

Statistics have shown though that although longer is better, the marks drop off after a certain average of around 650 words. This should be a sound warning that around 600 words, you should be getting ready to wrap up your essay.

Table of Contents

Tips to Write GRE Essays:

This might seem like the most obvious tip, but it’s the most overlooked one. It’s so easy to prepare amiss.

How are you preparing for the GRE ESSAY?

Look up GRE writing prompts online, review sample topics and then practice!

Do not memorise anything, just practice.

Doing this regularly would make you accustomed to the GRE mode of writing, and you won’t be too nervous on the day of the test.

2. Time Management

This could easily be the most important tip. If you are like most test-takers, you would feel the thirty minutes reducing drastically the moment you seat at the screen. Don’t worry; it’s the pressure. To get the most out of your time, what you need to do is to divide the thirty minutes amongst each writing sections. Here is an example, feel free to tweak it accordingly:

• 2 minutes to read through the prompt and instructions.
• 2 minutes to outline the ideas you want to write.
• 3 minutes to write an intro.
• 15 minutes to write the body paragraphs and also give examples where necessary.
• 3 minutes to write a conclusion.
• 3 minutes to go through your work and make the necessary edits.

You have two minutes to spare!

3. Read Instructions Carefully

If you’ve ever written an exam before, then you know how the pressure mounts as soon as you seat in that chair. Your heart starts to race, and sometimes, your vision starts to blur.

This is the moment to take a deep breath and slow down. Read the instructions carefully. Be aware you are reading the instructions and assimilate it accordingly. Every little detail matter.

4. Use Proper Grammar

ETS has stated that in a GRE essay, they are looking for clarity and quality. Yet, if we look at it objectively, these criteria are closely related to grammar.

If in writing your essay, you make two or three grammatical errors, the clarity of your essay has been sacrificed.

Try not to mar the quality and clarity of your essays. Slow down for a moment and be sure everything is in order. Your pronouns, nouns, clauses, punctuations and everything.

There are tips online on how to improve your grammar style.

5. Structure

Large blocks of texts are boring to read, and as soon as the grader sees it, he or she falls half asleep. Structure your essays into paragraphs to make them readable.

Spoon feed the reader with small, easy texts. Do not rush them.

And also, avoid the use of big grammars or fancy words. Just go straight to the point.

6. Know the Types of Essays

I mentioned earlier that the GRE essays are divided into two parts. These parts are:

• Issue essays.
• Argument essays.

Before starting on any one of the above, you have to know what you have been asked to do. They are completely different types of essays, and it’s easy to get confused.

7. Issue Essays

In this section, there would be a founding argument. For the sake of this essay, you would be tasked with analysing the issue and then creating an essay to either disagree or agree with it.

Tips to Note

1. outline the arguments.

The first step to writing a great issue essay is by first outlining the statements for and against the argument on the ground. Then choose the side that has the best argument.

You have to choose aside. No matter how tempting it is, do not embrace both sides of the argument.

2. Make a Concession Point

When writing, you would be asked to bring up an argument from the side of the essay you disagree with. This is the concession point, and that is why you were tasked with looking at both sides of the argument.

Since you already outlined the arguments in the first place, it would be so easy to find a concession point.

3. Argument Essays

In this section, you do not need to agree or disagree with the founding argument. What you are asked to do is dissect the logic behind the argument.

1. Identify the Presumptions

To analyse the argument, first, try to find the presumptions the author must have made. You will be sure to find one or two. Then show why these presumptions are unwarranted.

2. Find the Logic

Just like the author would have made assumptions, there would also be some logic he or she would have made. It would be best if you had both sides of this to analyse the argument properly.

3. Never Agree with the Argument

Whatever the argument you are presented, do not agree with it. Do not! Analyse, break down, but never agree! Challenge the argument.

The GRE ESSAYS are not an easy task to write, and it’s best you know it, but these tips are guaranteed to cut the frustration down by half. Good luck with it.

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Gre prep online guides and tips, how long to study for the gre: step-by-step guide.

The GRE can be intimidating: you know you need to study to get a good score, but what does that actually mean? Should you spend two hours or two months prepping? How long should you study for the GRE?

Knowing the correct amount of time to study for the GRE will help you maximize your score and avoid wasting time by over-studying. This guide will walk you through the exact process of figuring out exactly how long to study for the GRE , when you should start preparing, and how to create a study schedule.

How Long Do Most People Study For the GRE?

As mentioned above, there’s a wide variation in the amount of time people choose to prepare for the GRE.  However, most people spend about one to three months studying a few hours a week for the GRE. This means the amount of studying for the GRE could range roughly from eight hours (studying two hours a week for four weeks) to 120 hours (studying ten hours a week for 12 weeks).

That’s a wide range, and it also doesn’t account for the different ways in which people prepare for the GRE. People may take practice tests, read up on the different exam sections, skim old notes from school, buy and read a GRE prep book, or a combination of the above.

So, the amount of time people spend preparing for the GRE and how they study for it can vary widely. How long should you study for the GRE? Read on to figure out your individual study plan.

How Much Do You Want to Improve Your Score?

In order to figure out how long to study for the GRE, you first need to set a goal score and figure out how far you are from it.

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Step 1: Figure Out Which Score You Should Be Aiming For

First, research the average GRE scores of the schools you’re interested in applying to. Look for this information on the program’s Admissions page. Not all schools list this information, and, if you can’t find it, you can try emailing or calling an admissions person at the school directly to see if they can tell you more.

Make a list of this information for each of the schools you’re interested in. Then, find the highest scores for both the Verbal and Quantitative sections.  Add two points to each of these scores to get your GRE score goals.

This process ensures that, if you meet your score goals, you’ll be above the acceptable score range for the schools you’re interested in, but it also doesn’t set your goal score so high that you’re spending a lot of time trying to get an unnecessarily high score. (Remember, your GRE score is just one part of your application, and having an especially high score probably won’t give your application that much of a boost.)

To learn more about finding information on school GRE averages and setting goal scores, check out our guide “What Is a Good GRE Score?”

Step 2: Take and Score a Practice GRE

Your next step, if you haven’t already done so, is to take a GRE practice exam so you can get an idea of how you’re currently scoring.  You can download software with two official practice tests to get started. Take this test timed, with only the breaks that are given, and with minimal distractions in order to get the most accurate score.

Your Verbal and Quantitative sections will be automatically scored, and there are scoring instructions for the Analytical Writing section.

Step 3: Figure Out How Much You Need to Study to Meet Your Score Goal

Now, compare the scores you got on the practice test with your goal scores. How many points away are you from your goal scores in Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning? (Analytical Writing is generally the section schools are least interested in).

Below are estimates of approximately how many hours you need to study in order to raise your score by a certain number of points.  These numbers indicate how much you need to study to raise your GRE score by that many points across BOTH sections. So, in 40 hours, you could raise your score for each section by about  2.5 points (5 points total).

• 5 points = 40 hours
• 10 points = 80 hours
• 20 points = 160 hours
• 30 points = 240 hours

These are very rough rules of thumb. Depending on your individual circumstances, you may need more or less time – we’ll explain more below.

If you’re looking to improve your score more than 30 points, know that it will probably be difficult and take a lot of time. The GRE tests knowledge you learned from over a decade of school, and it’s hard to build up the content and skills you need to raise your score by that amount. If you are hoping to make large improvements in your GRE score, you may want to look into hiring a tutor to help with your studying.

How Long Should You Study for the GRE?

Now you can figure out exactly how long to study for the GRE in order to get the score you want. It may seem like there are a lot of steps, but they’re quick to go through, and by the end you’ll be able to create a customized GRE study schedule.

Step 1: Figure Out How Many Hours You Need to Study

If you haven’t already, use the guidelines above to get the total number of hours you need to study based on how much you want to improve your score.  Remember, you can raise your score by about 5 points per 40 hours of prep.

So, if you want to improve your score by 10 points, you’d need to study 80 hours.

Step 2: Make Any Necessary Adjustments

You may need to tweak the total number of hours you need to study based on your circumstances. If you’ve already studied a lot, you may want to add another 10-20 hours to the time you need to study since it will probably take you longer to make significant progress.

The more studying you’ve already put in, the harder it will be to raise your score. The first few hours of studying you do for any subject are always the most productive because you’ll get the “low-hanging fruit”: equations you were mixing up, careless mistakes you were making, a certain question type you had no experience with etc.

Also account for how quickly you pick up new material. Can you pick up and retain information the first time you come across it, or do you need to see it a few times before it really sinks in? If you’re a fast learner, you may want to decrease the number of hours you need to study by about 10-25%, while if learning new topics usually takes you longer, you may want to increase the time by 10-25%.

Finally, the better the prep materials you use, the faster you’ll improve. If you’re using unrealistic practice questions or bad teaching materials, you’ll make less progress. If you use top-of-the-line realistic questions with lessons that teach you great strategies, you’ll be much more efficient.

Step 3: Decide How Many Hours You Can Study in a Week

Next, figure out how many hours you can set aside each week to study for the GRE.  Make sure you’re realistic when you choose this number because, if you overestimate, you could end up burned out and frustrated, which could lead to you not doing as well as you’d like on the exam or abandoning your study plan all together.

If it’s summer and you have a lot of free time, you may be able to fit in 20-40 hours of studying a week. However, if you’re already balancing school and/or work, 5-10 hours of GRE study a week might be more realistic.

To a certain extent, the more hours you can study a week, the fewer overall weeks you’ll have to study. However, don’t think that cramming 40 hours over a weekend will have the same effect as spreading that studying out over several weeks. If you try to fit a lot of studying into a single day, you’ll probably wear yourself out and stop retaining information after a certain point.

Similarly, if you only study an hour every week or two and stretch your studying over a long period of time, you’ll probably forget what you learned at the beginning by the time of the GRE.

Step 4: Calculate How Long You Need to Study

Here’s where you figure out how long you need to study for the GRE.   Take the total numbers you need to study and divide it by the number of hours you can study each week. The number you come up with is the number of weeks you need to study for the GRE.

So, if you need to study 90 hours (80 hours to improve 10 points plus 10 hours because it takes you longer to remember material), and you think you can study 10 hours a week, 90 divided by 10 gives you 9, which means you’ll need to study nine weeks for the GRE.

Step 5: Include Time for Retakes

If you think you may want to retake the GRE if you’re not happy with your first score, be sure to budget time for retakes. You have to wait at least 21 days between GRE tests, but, to be safe, give yourself four weeks for each retake so you’ll have enough time to figure out what you did wrong and improve. For most people, two retakes are enough.

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To continue the example from above, if you needed nine weeks to prepare to take the GRE for the first time, and you want to budget time for one retake, you’d need a total of 13 weeks from when you start studying to when you take the GRE a second time.

Step 6: Double-Check School Deadlines

Once you’ve decide how long to study for the GRE, you’ll want to make sure you’ll have enough time to prepare for and take the exam before grad schools need to have your scores.

If you’re not applying for grad school for at least six months, this step doesn’t apply to you because you’ll have plenty of time to take the GRE if you start relatively soon. If you choose which schools to send your score reports to at the test center immediately after you finish the GRE, it will take 10-15 days for those schools (and you)  to receive your official scores, so, to be safe, be sure to take the GRE at least three weeks before deadlines.

So, accounting for three weeks for schools to receive scores, the person in the example would need to begin preparing for the GRE 16 weeks before their first application deadline (9 weeks to prepare for the first exam + 4 weeks to prepare for a retake + 3 weeks for schools to receive the scores).

What if you can’t fit in your studying before school deadlines? There are a few things you can do. First, if you factored in time for retakes, you can decide to prepare really well and only take the GRE once, although there is more risk involved.

Second, you can try to see if you can fit in more hours of GRE prep each week. The more hours you can study each week, the fewer weeks you’ll need to study for the GRE.

Step 7: Create Your GRE Study Schedule

Once you know when you need to begin studying and how long you’ll need to study, create a study schedule so you can track your progress and reach your score goals.

First, try to schedule your study times for the same times each day or week. This will help you plan the rest of your schedule, and you’ll be more likely to do the studying you need to if it’s always at the same time.

When you study, remember to take regular practice tests, about every month or so, to track your progress. You’ll also want to set goals to achieve at the end of every study period. You could have daily, weekly, or monthly goals depending on your schedule and what works best for you. The goals could be covering a new topic or increasing your score a certain number of points on a practice exam.

How Long to Study for the GRE: Final Verdict

Some people study months before they take the GRE, while others don’t prepare at all. However, to get your best score, you need to know how long you should study. After figuring out average GRE scores for the schools you’re interested in and taking a practice exam, you’ll know how many points you’ll need to improve in order to meet your goal scores.

Take into account how busy you are, when school deadlines are, how quickly you study, and how much you’ve already studied in order to fine tune how long you need to study for the GRE.

Developing a study schedule once you’ve figured out how long you need to study will help you track your progress and meet goals throughout your preparation.

What’s Next?

Want more information on the GRE? Check out our guide to everything you need to know about the GRE , including how long it is, what it covers, and how you should prepare.

Once you’ve decided when to take the GRE, how do you register for the exam?  Read our step-by-step guide to GRE registration for everything you need to know.

Thinking about taking a GRE Subject Test? Learn who should take them, how important they are, and how you can prepare .

Ready to improve your GRE score by 7 points?

Author: Christine Sarikas

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries. View all posts by Christine Sarikas

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