grade my gre essay

Free Online GRE AWA Essay Grader

Automatic essay rating software for practice.

The GRE analytical writing is a small but important component of the test that troubles many international test takers. We’ve had several candidates asking us:

“How can I rate my GRE AWA essay for practice?”
“Can I download a free GRE essay e-rater?”

Well, there are a few paid options offered by some test prep companies. But not much out there that’s free and a close approximation of the real deal. So we created this free essay grader for GRE essays.

Conceptualized and developed by Sameer Kamat , the software uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) principles and our understanding of how AWA essays are evaluated. We know it’s far from perfect, since no automated essay grader can accurately do (yet) what the trained human brain can. And it’s definitely not the equivalent of a free ScoreItNow report, if that’s what you wanted.

But we hope it’s better than having no feedback at all on your practice AWA essays during the GRE preparation journey.

Grade my GRE Essay

There is no software to download. You can use our free online GRE essay immediately. All you need to do is:

Type or paste your GRE essay in the box below. [Wait for the text box to load. If it’s taking too long, refresh the page.]
Click on the ‘Check’ button
Your essay grade along with the breakup across 3 dimensions (Structure, Readability and Coherence) will be displayed.

Here’s a brief introduction to the various sub-topics that our online essay evaluator covers:

Organization: This checks the attributes related to the building blocks of GRE essays i.e. attributes related to the words, sentences and paragraphs in the AWA essay.

Readability: This tests (using industry standard metrics) how easy it is for the reader to grasp what you have written. Try to maintain a balance between the over-simplistic and the hard-to-comprehend approach.

Coherence: This goes into the nuances of natural language processing and evaluates how you have connected the building blocks using the appropriate English language constructs.

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GRE Essay LiveGrader

You've probably heard about the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) essays on the GRE. They're nothing to fear, but you should know that the way they are graded is different from what you're used to.

The best way to prepare for the GRE essay is to write one and have it graded by an expert, using the same guidelines that are used for the real GRE. GRE Essay LiveGrader sm helps you to do just that.

LiveGrader sm is a tool that we've developed to help you prepare for the GRE. All Princeton Review classroom, online, and tutoring students can submit their GRE essays which will then be graded by one of our GRE experts. Not only will our expert grader score your GRE essays, but he or she will also provide personalized feedback that will help you maximize your score on the AWA portion of the GRE.

Frequently Asked Questions about GRE Essay LiveGrader sm

How is my gre essay graded.

After you submit your GRE essay, one of our expert graders will score it using the same guidelines that are used for the GRE. Essays will be scored holistically, which means that your GRE essay will be judged as a whole, not just on the basis of particular traits.

Who will grade my GRE essay?

A trained and certified Princeton Review expert grader will grade your GRE essay. Our experienced graders know what makes a strong GRE essay; many have graded thousands of essays.

Do I have to write about a specific topic for my GRE essay?

Yes. The essay "prompts" ask you to write on specific topics; one will ask you to analyze an argument, the other will ask you to analyze an issue. Your GRE essay must address the issues presented in the prompts. GRE essays written on any other topic will receive a score of zero.

How are the GRE essays different from the essays I wrote in school?

Unlike many essays you write in school, you'll only have 30 minutes, and you won't be able to use reference materials. Graders won't be expecting perfection; they will be judging your GRE essay for what it is: a first draft. Furthermore, the person grading your GRE essay will only spend 2–3 minutes evaluating your writing.

When I use LiveGrader sm , will I receive just a score, or will I get comments too?

Your GRE essay will be given a score ranging from 0–6. LiveGrader will also provide you with personalized feedback. Your report will tell you what worked well on your GRE essay and how you can improve it to earn a higher score on the real GRE AWA.

How do I get my score?

We will e–mail your score and personalized feedback within 3–5 days after you submit your GRE essay. You can also access your score on the website, once it has been posted.

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20+ PROVEN ways to boost your GRE essay score (backed by data!)

Looking for ways to improve your GRE Analytical Writing scores? In this post, we’ll teach you some simple GRE essay tips to give you an edge over the competition – backed by real graded essay data.

GRE essay scoring factors - beeswarm plot

There are a lot of opinions out there on what makes a good GRE essay, but we wanted to know for sure. Studying for the GRE is stressful enough, and you deserve to know exactly how to ace every section. So, we paid several GRE instructors to hand score 1,000+ GRE essay examples and determined empirically, without a doubt, the keys to writing the perfect GRE essay.

Using these GRE analytical writing examples, we trained a machine learning model capable of accurately predicting your score and letting you know exactly how you can improve.

Here are the top 5 keys our model said have the biggest impact on getting a top analytical writing GRE score:

Total word count
Total noun count
Prompt keyword usage
Total adjectives count

Sentence variety

In this article, we’ll outline the process we took to build the machine learning-backed essay grader and answer the question of how to write a great GRE essay once and for all.

The GRE analytical writing section

The gre essay grader, analyzing the ets gre resources, nlp and key entity extraction, machine learning, gre essay score analysis results, beeswarm plot, waterfall plot, top findings, prompt keywords, adjectives count, spelling error rate, average sentence count, thesis word count, thesis sentence average word count, thesis people count, body paragraph word count, body paragraph quotation count, body paragraph exclamatory sentence count, conclusion word count, conclusion sentence word count, case study: a high-scoring gre issue essay example, case study: a medium-scoring gre argument essay, summary of results: gre essay tips for a great gre analytical writing score.

Essay writing can be a difficult skill to master , and to ace the GRE you’ll need to write two: the argument essay and the issue essay. These essays test your critical thinking and analytical writing skills, your ability to communicate complex ideas, develop logical arguments, and maintain a focused discussion. Although the GRE issue essay and the GRE argument essay follow different GRE essay prompts, the criteria they’re graded on and the way to write these essays are basically the same.

With only 30 minutes to complete each essay, you need to be efficient. But what if you had analytical writing GRE tips that could basically guarantee a high essay score, because they were reverse-engineered using machine learning? It would make getting that perfect 6.0 GRE analytical writing score Achievable 😉

Each GRE analytical writing section consists of a topic of discussion and specific instructions on how to respond. In the allotted 30 minutes, GRE takers must be able to analyze the prompt, plan a relevant response, and write an organized and coherent issue essay or argument essay supported by evidence.

Needless to say, every second counts. To help set up Achievable’s GRE course customers for success, we’ve built a machine learning-based essay grading system trained on thousands of professionally graded GRE essays, using real GRE essay prompts. Let’s dig into how it works and how we learned the most important factors for getting that perfect 6.0 GRE essay score.

The Educational Testing Service (ETS), the creators of the GRE, provide some information on how to score a perfect 6.0 on the essay sections. They mention that writers should “articulate a clear and insightful position”, “develop the position fully”, give “compelling reasons and/or persuasive examples”, and “convey ideas fluently and precisely”. It’s great that ETS is trying to give students some direction on how to get a good GRE essay score, but none of these tips are quantifiable. How do you know if an argument position is “clear and insightful,” or if an example of an issue is persuasive?

We don’t like leaving things to chance or rule-of-thumbs, and in building our GRE essay grader we dug into the details to figure out what issue essay and argument essay characteristics are empirically, data-backed, and without a doubt, the keys to getting the best score on the GRE essay sections.

We hired professional GRE instructors from different firms to hand score our essays, and analyzed the results to determine the key features leading to a high GRE essay score. Using a variety of different technologies, we built a best-in-class GRE essay grading tool that can help take your GRE essay writing skills from a 0 to a 6. We want to share the details of our process so that you can feel confident in using the Achievable platform to pass your exam without breaking a sweat.

Let’s take a look under the hood.

The first step in building our GRE essay grader was to comb through every resource the ETS had on GRE analytical writing. Since our GRE essay grader is tailor made to help you score high on the GRE writing sections, the information provided by the creator of the test is by far the most valuable.

We poured through ETS GRE resources, looking for the characteristics that make up a great GRE essay. We did the boring work so you don’t have to, reading through every single line of their GRE issue essay examples, their GRE argument essay examples, and the result was a document almost twenty pages long detailing our findings.

We looked at everything from the obvious characteristics (also called traits or features ) like word count, to details like the number of adjectives used. Of course, at this point we were making intelligent guesses about what was important. The real judge of what to focus on when writing a GRE essay response would be our machine learning model.

Having twenty pages of notes was a great start but the next step would be the major challenge. We needed a reliable way of extracting these traits from a piece of English writing. Unfortunately for us, computers don’t understand English, which meant we needed to dive into the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP).

NLP is a subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence that is helping to bridge the gap between the language used by humans, and the way computers process information.

Luckily, we love to learn here at Achievable, and after a whole lot more research we were ready to build software that could take an essay and dissect it into a list of features. This process, called key entity extraction , was fundamental to building our GRE essay grader. Now that we could reliably process GRE essays and get our feature data out the other end, we were almost ready to train our model.

The last step before training was to prepare the extracted data. Machine learning is very good at one thing, and that’s discovering relationships between sets of data – otherwise it’s not as smart as you’d think. Outliers in the dataset can skew the results, especially when the outliers are very large or very small compared to the average. This meant that the data provided to the ML algorithm had to be pre-processed, or normalized .

Data normalization usually involves rescaling the data such that all values are between 0 and 1. Using the results of our previous analysis, we determined lists of trait values that could be used to normalize the data.

For example, most GRE issue essay templates and GRE argument essay templates follow the conventional essay writing advice of using a 5 paragraph essay structure. This GRE essay template format includes a thesis, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Normalizing the paragraph count by 5 would create a trait that the ML algorithm could use to work its magic. If we provided more traits to the model, such as the paragraph count normalized by 3, and also by 10, the model could give us more information, and a high degree of confidence, whether 5 paragraphs is the way to go to get a high score. Following this approach, we normalized our dataset of GRE essays and provided hundreds of traits for the machine learning model to analyze.

With our key entity extraction software ready to go, and our sample GRE essay data normalized, we were ready to train a machine learning model using the thousands of hand scored, real-world GRE issue essay examples and GRE argument essay examples.

We built our machine learning model using TensorFlow, and in the training stage, passed huge amounts of data through neural networks resulting in a model that could reliably predict the score of a GRE essay. Using a variety of data science tools we generated charts to help describe the results. These charts help illustrate how each trait affects the predicted score of an GRE essay. We can see which traits have the most significant effect, and by how much, making it very clear how to write a GRE essay.

The chart shown below is called a beeswarm plot and it represents the combined results of the thousands of GRE essays graded by the machine learning model. Here’s how to read it:

Each row in the plot corresponds to a specific feature
The rows are ordered from top to bottom starting with the feature that had the biggest impact
Each colored dot in the row represents a single instance of the feature, i.e. the value of the feature for a specific GRE essay
The dots are colored according to the size of their value, where the lowest values are blue and the highest values are red
The gray line down the middle is the zero-impact-line, with values falling to the right having a positive impact on the predicted result and the values falling to the left having a negative impact

Now with that explained, here is the beeswarm plot results from our GRE essay research:

For example, we can see from the plot that the total number of words used in the essay had the biggest impact on the score. Because the impact of a feature increases as the distance of the dots from the zero-impact-line increases, the blue dots extending far to the left indicate that low essay word counts have a large negative impact on score. On the other hand, the red dots tend to cluster slightly to the right of the zero-impact-line, indicating that writing a longer essay can help, but the impact is much smaller. The takeaway here is that you should avoid writing too short an essay, rather than trying to write a very long one.

The chart below is called a force plot and it gives a general idea of how each feature affects the machine learning model’s predicted result for a specific GRE essay.

The base value (4.339) is the average predicted score across all graded GRE essay examples
The actual prediction for this essay is shown at f(x) (5.00)
Each feature has a positive contribution (red) or negative contribution (blue) to the final score

Examining the force plot quickly tells us about the rough impact of each feature and if any stand out. We can see that the weight distribution is fairly gradual, with no single feature having an extraordinary impact. The force plot gives us a good summary of a specific GRE essay scored feature results, but isn’t very actionable. Our next chart, the waterfall plot, gives us a much more detailed explanation.

The chart below is called a waterfall plot and it gives us a more detailed view of how each feature affects the predicted score for a specific GRE essay.

The starting value E[f(x)] (4.339) is the average predicted score across all graded GRE essay samples
The features are ordered from top to bottom by the magnitude of their impact, which can be either positive (red) or negative (blue)
The final value f(x) (4.999) is the predicted score

For this GRE essay, we can see that a low spelling error rate, i.e. having a low number of spelling mistakes, had a significant positive impact on the score (+0.11). On the other hand, a low word count (-0.11) essentially neutralized the positive contribution of the low spelling error rate. Similarly, a good usage of nouns throughout the essay positively contributed (+0.07) to the score, while a low word count for the body paragraphs (-0.07) basically negated this impact.

Our top findings for what you can to do impact your GRE essay score, listed in priority order:

Higher values for word count have a positive effect on the predicted score while low values have a significant negative effect.
Low word counts were more significant in their negative effect on score, so rather than trying to write a long essay, focus on not writing one that is too short. In fact, we can see that high values also had a negative effect for some essays, likely when the essay was long but low in quality. In other words, a short essay will tend to bring down your score .
A higher value for noun count contributes positively while low values contribute negatively.
Since nouns identify a person, place or thing, an essay lacking in nouns would be unfocused and imprecise. It’s hard to score a 6.0 on a GRE essay if no one knows what you’re talking about! So, a low number of nouns contributes significantly to a lower score .
Measuring the presence of keywords found in the GRE essay prompt throughout the essay it was clear that an absence of prompt keywords contributed to a lower score .
This was especially true for the thesis paragraph, where the goal is to clearly specify your main position on the issue or argument topic. Using keywords from the GRE essay prompt guarantees that your response is focused on the given topic.
For the adjectives count we saw only a minor and somewhat ambiguous negative contribution by low values while higher values strongly contributed to a higher score.
A higher number of adjectives indicates a more descriptive essay. Since being descriptive helps to develop and clarify your response, be sure to use lots of adjectives alongside your nouns.
Looking at the number of short, long, and very long sentences, and the ratios between these values, we found that long sentences (16 to 49 words) were the optimal choice for sentence length. We also saw that a higher proportion of short sentences to long sentences contributed to a lower score .
This suggests that you should prefer more long sentences than short sentences in your writing . However, using solely long sentences can also lower your score, so be sure to include the odd short sentence to establish variety.
A high spelling error rate contributed to a lower score.
No surprises here, making spelling mistakes will bring your score down!
Paragraphs with too few or too many sentences had a slight negative impact on the score.
A GRE essay paragraph should strike a balance between accurately introducing and supporting a point, without rambling or going off topic. We found the sweet spot to be around 8 sentences per body paragraph and about 5 for the thesis and conclusion paragraphs.
Thesis paragraphs under 100 words contributed to a lower score.
The thesis paragraph should be long enough to describe the focus of your response and your main reasons for supporting it.
Short sentences in the thesis paragraph showed a slight negative contribution.
It is especially important that the thesis paragraph provides enough context to effectively introduce and focus the essay response.
The GRE essay grader found a relationship between mentioning a person’s name in the thesis paragraph and a higher score.
Whether you are repeating a name found in the GRE essay prompt, or trying to provide context, try to reference a person’s name in your thesis paragraph.
Body paragraphs under 150 words contributed to a lower score.
The body paragraph is the meat of your GRE essay and should be long enough to introduce a point, provide and analyze evidence, connect to the thesis statement, and transition to the next paragraph.
Surprisingly, using quotations in body paragraphs contributed to a lower score.
While quotations may help provide evidence in general essay writing, when writing a GRE essay, focus on concisely responding to the prompt.
The use of exclamatory sentences (those ending with an exclamation mark) contributed to a lower score.
Exclamation marks are generally not used in academic writing. WHY??!?! They just don’t feel that professional!!!
If you need to emphasize a point make sure you do so with your language.
A concise conclusion (about 100 words) contributed to a higher GRE essay score.
A conclusion should wrap up your GRE essay, and not introduce more information. Make sure to focus the conclusion on summarizing the GRE essay topic, the essay’s main points, and making the connection to your thesis clear.
Conclusions composed of fewer but longer sentences contributed to a higher score.
Sentence variety doesn’t play a big role when it comes to the conclusion paragraph. Focus on using long sentences to summarize your main points and tie everything together.

The following is an example of a high scoring GRE essay submitted by an Achievable user. Our human GRE instructors, as well as our machine-learning GRE essay grading system, score this as a perfect 6.0.

Here is the GRE issue essay prompt:

And the corresponding GRE essay example:

The names of the greatest rulers, artists, and scientists is what is taught in most history classes. Little attention is given to the common people. Despite the fact that the most prolific and talented members of a society have a profound effect on their nations, it is the common people that truly embody the nation and it is them who keep it running. From the plumber, to the lawyer, to the homeless person; they all contribute their grain of salt to the identity and strength of the nation. The purpose of a nation is to create a just society in which every individual can enjoy the wealth and resources of the nation. A nation without a solid base will never be able to allow artists and scientists to create their most innovative and creative master pieces. Without the combined effort of all its people, there will be no Albert Einstein or Mozart, because there will be no resources to encourage these geniuses to develop their talents to their highest potential. The only way a nation can have a solid base is by guaranteeing the well-being of all its citizens. With happy citizens, nations have the solid foundation needed to produce the greatest achievements humanity can accomplish. Thus, the greatest of all nations are those in which the general well-being of its population is at its highest because happy citizens are more productive, more generous to each other, and more knowledgeable.

First, citizens living in a society that ensures their well being become much more productive than in a nation in which their well-being is not guaranteed. Dr. Friedman, in Berlin in the year 1975, conducted a controlled random experiment in which he tested the effects that well-being had in the production level of the subjects of the experiment. He created a control group and an experimental group, and assigned members to each group randomly. The experimental group was in a room that was very hot, whereas the control group was in a well ventilated room. Next, both groups were given simple tasks such as cutting squares out of circles and coloring an image. After 30 minutes had passes, Dr. Friedman evaluated who was able to complete most tasks in the 30 minute time window. He noticed that the experimental group completed only 80% of the tasks compared to the control group, which completed 100% of the tasks. As per Dr. Friedman: “the results of this experiment show how well-being has a negative effect on the productivity of individuals”. Less productive individuals are going to achieve less at work, meaning companies in general will be less productive and less competitive in the global market. In an increasingly competitive world, less productive companies will bring less resources to the nation, making it less likely to invest in the talent of its people.

Second, well-being is directly related to generosity. The more generous citizens of a nation are to each other, the more likely they are to help those in need around them. This, in turn, leads to a collective effort to lift each other up, making the nation more productive and wealthy. Thomas Frank and Imelda Seo developed a randomized experiment in which they tested the relationship between well-being and generosity. The study was conducted in Seoul in 1994 in a public university. The subjects of the test were randomly selected from different levels of the class in an effort to eliminate as many confounding variables as possible. The experimental group was told the very bad news that they had just failed their most recent test. After receiving this news, they were given a limited amount of chocolate and they were told to pick as much as they needed but to think that someone else will come after them and pick what is left from the chocolate. The person that will come later will not know how much chocolate was in the box originally. In contrast, the control group was told the same regarding taking as much chocolate as needed and to be mindful of the person coming behind them, but they were not given the initial bad news that they had failed their test. The results of the experiment show that the experimental group was 70% more likely to take all of the chocolate in the box than the control group. As per Imelda Ser: “this is indicative that when a person’s well-being is jeopardized, they are less likely to be generous.” This study shows how well-being can have a positive impact on the citizens of a nation, and this generosity can lead to citizens helping each other out more and creating a more cohesive and productive society and nation.

Third, citizens living in a nation in which their well-being is adequate are more knowledgeable. More knowledge can lead to greater discoveries. Great artists, scientists, and rulers all require proper education during their early years to achieve the success. If society as a whole is more educated, it is much more likely for a nation to be able to cultivate the talents of their next genius. For example, Amadeus Mozart was the son of a talented musical father that lived in Vienna, the classical music capital of the world at the time of this life. If Mozart would have been born in an empoverished family with no resources and no knowledge of music, who is to tell Austria would have produced such a notable musical expert. The father of Mozart lived a comfortable life that allowed him to develop his own talents, and later pass his new found knowledge to his son, who later took this knowledge to never before seen levels of musical prowess. To guarantee that the knowledge is passed on to the greatest individuals of a nation, it is necessary to ensure the general well-being of its citizens. Only then will a great nation be able to produce a Mozart, an Albert Einstein, or a Napoleon.

In conclusion, a nation can only be great if it can guarantee the well-being of all its citizenry. This is the only way a nation can ensure that the individual talents of certain prolific people can flourish. These individuals require a strong enough safety net that will allow them to pursue their dreams without having to worry about heating the house or finding the next meal. Also, citizens that are happy and living comfortable can produce more for the nation as a whole, and lift each other out of poverty, thus creating a great nation .

This GRE essay received a perfect score ( f(x) = 5.999 ) and the waterfall plot below describes what features had the biggest impact:

In this case, the feature with the biggest impact was the number of adjectives used . If you read the essay, you probably noticed how descriptive it was. The author provided plenty of detailed examples to support his thesis.

At 1,083 words, the GRE issue essay was a good length, and this helped boost the score.

The author added excellent context to the thesis paragraph by including the names of two prominent creatives: Albert Einstein and Mozart . These names were relevant to the response and supported the idea that when a nation guards the well-being of its citizens it fosters creativity and innovation.

Using plenty of nouns relevant to the prompt, the author was able to keep the essay focused and coherent. We can also see a good use of long sentences, giving the author the space needed to elaborate on and support the thesis. An overall low spelling error rate contributed positively to the score. Interestingly, we can see that the use of places in the body paragraphs (e.g. Berlin ) helped to boost the score.

The author received a minor penalty for the overuse of verbs in the thesis paragraph as well as a few spelling mistakes throughout the GRE essay. These negative contributions were ultimately insignificant compared to everything else that the author did right, clearly illustrating how focusing on the right characteristics can guarantee you a high scoring GRE essay.

The following is an example of a medium-scoring GRE essay submitted by an Achievable user. Our human GRE instructors, as well as our machine-learning GRE essay grading system, score this as a 3.5 with room for improvement.

Here is the GRE argument essay prompt:

And the corresponding essay:

More information is needed to accurately determine if the recommendation from the regional manager of Hamburger House should be followed. Information detailing the reason for changing to canola oil, the cost of canola oil, the effect canola oil has on the taste of french fries and other foods, if the public was made aware of the switch to canola oil, public’s perception of canola oil, if the customer reviews over the past two months were about the taste of the fries, any operating changes made at the company that could have affected sales, other factors that could have increased sales, Hamburger house expanding their locations and customer base, the effects on net profits are needed. Additional evidence is necessary to evaluate Hamburger House’s internal memo to franchises.

The reason for why Hamburger House switched to canola oil is the first piece of missing information needed. If canola oil was chosen because it is cheaper than vegetable oil, it would be a sensical choice to reduce costs and choose the cheaper oil. If canola oil were the more expensive option, there must be non-cost-related reasons that justify the switch. In either of the aforementioned scenarios, one must examine if the canola oil makes the fries and other foods taste the same, better, or worse. If canola oil makes all foods taste better and has a net positive effect on profits, franchises should follow the recommendation. If canola oil makes some but not all foods taste better, franchises should only use canola oil in foods that taste better and if there will be a net positive effect on profits.

The second piece of information needed to evaluate Hamburger House’s recommendation is the public’s perception of canola oil and vegetable oil and whether the public was made aware of Hamburger House’s switch to canola oil. If canola oil is perceived to be a healthier option or vegetable oil is perceived as an unhealthier option, it can be expected that the public would react positively to Hamburger House’s use of canola oil and increase foot traffic to its locations. However, if the public was not made aware of the switch in oils, information regarding the content of the positive reviews that Hamburger House has received in the past two months and if those positive reviews were all for locations that switched to canola oil are needed. If the reviews mentioned that the foods that contained canola oil tasted better, it would be reasonable for franchises to switch to canola oil to make their food taste better and, thereby, increase sales.

The third piece of information needed is whether Hamburger House expanded its locations and customer base in the past two months. An increase in french fry sales and average unique customers would naturally increase french fry sales.

The most important aspect as a business is the impact that canola oil has on earnings. It is necessary for a business to be financially profitable to survive. Therefore, if the switch to canola oil allows franchises of Hamburger House to be financially viable, franchises should make the switch if doing so if there is a positive effect compared to keeping vegetable oil.

This essay received a low score ( f(x) = 3.503 ) and the waterfall plot below describes what features had the biggest impact:

The feature with the biggest impact for this GRE essay was the total word count (-0.29). At 526 words, this example illustrates how dramatically a short GRE essay can affect the predicted score. In fact, we can see that the argument essay is penalized for low word count in various ways by other features, such as the body paragraph average word counts, total sentence counts, etc. Writing a longer argument essay is a straightforward way to guarantee a higher score and gives you more space to elaborate on and support the position from your GRE essay topic.

The second feature in the list measures the negative impact (-0.14) of the ratio of short to long sentences in the conclusion. In this case, the author used too many short sentences resulting in a lower score. The conclusion is meant to summarize the essay’s main points and tie them together with the thesis statement, a task that typically requires longer sentences. The conclusion of this argument essay could have been improved by using longer sentences to explain specifically how the thesis and supporting points are connected in addressing the issue laid out in the prompt.

The plot shows a high thesis noun count contributing to a lower score (-0.11). If we examine the thesis we can see the author uses an extremely long sentence that repeats many of the same nouns over and over again (e.g. canola oil). While using nouns is important to keep an essay focused on the topic, the nouns should be both relevant to the GRE essay topic and varied. Simply stuffing nouns into a paragraph will not have the desired effect. This thesis could have been improved by introducing fewer points while elaborating on how each point supports the thesis statement.

While the author did a few things right, it is clear that this GRE argument essay’s low score was majorly due to a low word count, weak use of nouns, poor sentence variety, and an overall lack of focus and specificity. Catching issues like these before the exam can help you improve your writing skills and boost your score by multiple points.

So if you want to improve your GRE analytical writing essay skills, what do you need to do?

Make sure your essay is long enough to avoid being penalized for a short essay
Ensure your essay is focused by using plenty of nouns that relate to the topic
Write a descriptive essay by using lots of adjectives to describe your position, evidence, and ideas
Read the prompt carefully, highlight keywords, and use these keywords throughout your essay, most importantly in your thesis paragraph
Vary your sentence length, but in general favor the use of longer sentences
Avoid making spelling mistakes
Aim for 8 sentences per body paragraph and 5 sentences for thesis and conclusion paragraphs
Keep your thesis and conclusion paragraphs concise but use at least 100 words
Reference a person’s name in your thesis paragraph if it’s relevant
Keep your body paragraphs above 150 words
Avoid the use of exclamation marks and quotations

Our Achievable GRE course offers hundreds of GRE essay prompts and GRE essay topics for the GRE issue and argument essays, giving you the opportunity to practice your analytical writing skills until you are 100% confident in getting a top GRE essay score. Your work is automatically saved as you write and includes a timer to keep you on track.

Achievable’s proprietary GRE essay grading system uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze your GRE essay writing and provides instant feedback on exactly what you can do to boost your score. Backed by our vast amount of data from real-world GRE issue essay examples and GRE argument essay examples, we’ve created the smartest GRE essay grader that exists, included with your purchase of Achievable GRE .

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How to Structure the GRE Issue Essay

The GRE Issue essay is similar in structure to the classic 5-paragraph short essay. You may opt for 4-6 paragraphs, but the template given here plans for 5. The official GRE website states that readers of the Issue essay “are evaluating the skill with which you address the specific instructions and articulate and develop an argument to support your evaluation of the issue.” The better organized your essay is, the clearer it will become to the reader.

[ RELATED: 7 Tips for a Perfect GRE Issue Essay ]

Template Paragraph 1: The Introduction

As you develop your points, make sure to pepper your analysis with words that guide the reader through the argument you are making. Words such as because, although, furthermore, however, alternatively will catch the reader’s attention while you develop your argument.

Here’s how to structure each paragraph in your template (taken from our GRE study guide ):

Although the reader will have access to the prompt you received, your essay should stand on its own, making clear the assignment you were given and your response to it. Start your essay by clearly restating the issue you were assigned, followed by a sentence stating your position on that assignment–that is, your thesis. Next, introduce the specific reasons or examples you plan to provide in each of the next three paragraphs, one sentence for each of the forthcoming paragraphs.

Consider the specific task you were assigned, and make sure the language you use in your initial paragraph demonstrates that you understand the special instructions in your assignment. For instance, if your task tells you to “be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position,” you will be clear to show at least two strong reasons or examples the side opposing yours can use–and then explain why those reasons or examples are incorrect.

Template Paragraph 2: Body Paragraph 1

Bring up your example.
Explain how it relates to the topic.
Show that it fully supports your thesis.

Template Paragraph 3: Body Paragraph 2

Template paragraph 4: final body paragraph, template paragraph 5: conclusion.

If you find you are running out of time, it is better to include your final body paragraph and eliminate the conclusion paragraph, because the conclusion doesn’t add anything new to your analysis. An otherwise well-developed Issue Essay that lacks a conclusion will not be penalized.

Top 4 Tips for a Strong GRE Issue Essay

Choose a side..

… and stick to it! It doesn’t matter which one—just know that trying to have it both ways will come across as waffling.

Be specific and relevant.

Whether your examples are about Mitt Romney, the mating rituals of octopi, or your Uncle Ralph the compulsive gambler, keep them specific and relevant to the real world. You can have some fun, as long as everything you write supports your argument—and you show how it does.

Make strong, declarative statements.

Charged modifiers, active language, and cause-effect sentences add confidence and distinction. “It is unacceptable for the president to permit Congress to pass the law because it unconstitutionally overextends Congress’ powers…” beats “The president shouldn’t allow Congress to pass the law…” any day.

Refute the other position.

Try introducing the opposing viewpoint in your conclusion—then refute it in one to two sentences, reinforcing your own thesis and ending on a strong point.

GRE Issue Essay Sample

Try this sample GRE Issue Essay prompt for practice. Remember that you’ll have 30 minutes to complete it on GRE Test Day. There are various questions you might be asked to answer on the Issue Essay, so it’s best to practice a few different prompts.

The emergence of the online “blogosphere” and social media has significantly weakened the quality of political discourse in the United States. Reason: When anyone can publish political opinions easily, standards for covering news and political topics will inevitably decline.

Write a response in which you examine your own position on the statement. Explore the extent to which you either agree or disagree with it, and support your reasoning with evidence and/or examples. Be sure to reflect on ways in which the statement might or might not be true, and how this informs your thinking on the subject.

How To Write and Structure GRE Issue Essay

Gre analytical writing essay scoring process.

Your GRE essays will be scored by half-point increments, from 0 to 6 (highest). Two graders will score both this argument essay and your issue essay. A third grader will also score your essays if your two initial graders’ scores differ by more than one point. The graders base scores on their overall impression of your essay — holistically — rather than deducting points for specific errors.

The GRE test maker, Educational Testing Service (ETS) reports a single score—the average of the two essays—rounded up to the nearest half-point. This score makes up the essay portion of your overall GRE score, despite there being two separate essays. You can read more from ETS on specific score level breakdowns here .

[ PREVIOUS : < What’s Tested on the GRE: Analytical Writing ] [ NEXT: How to structure the GRE Argument Essay > ]

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How to Get Your AWA Practice Essays Graded?

Given the sheer number of students who ask me this question about the GRE Analytical Writing essay, I am surprised that there are so few resources that offer such a service. So what do you do when you’re desperate? Well, here are some of my recommended options to consider.

ETS ScoreItNow!

For $20 dollars, the ETS ScoreItNow! Essay Grader will grade two of your essays . You also get six bonus topics (three for Analyze an Issue and three for Analyze an Argument) that can be submitted for scoring as well. While I have never used the service myself—nor, for that matter known anyone who has—I’m sure the score is pretty accurate. The only downside is that’s all you get—ETS does not provide any feedback on the essays themselves. Nonetheless, if you feel that you are not improving on the essay, then you should definitely consider the service offered by ETS.

For those who don’t necessarily want to part with their money, or who actually want more than just a score, here are a few other options.

Find a friend

I know, I know, this may seem like a cop out answer. But the truth is that having a second pair of eyes, even untrained, can be really beneficial to finding your flaws. First, you need to have a friend with a pretty strong essay writing skills. Next, you need to ask them nicely, or at least offer them a cup of coffee. You should let them know that you only had 30 minutes to write your essay, and so the GRE people aren’t expecting Pulitzer Prize-winning material.

You should also tell them to pay attention to the following: structure, logical flow of ideas, and persuasiveness of examples. They should not be looking for fancy-sound GRE words. At the same time, your writing should be relatively sophisticated and should vary up the sentence structure so it doesn’t sound choppy.

Compare your work

I have a mock essay on our blog. There are a few essays in our product as well. Many test prep books have mock essays out there. Usually these essays cover the spectrum of grades, from a ‘2’ to a ‘6’. (A ‘0’ is essentially passing out and drooling on the keyboard; or typing away in Swahili).

See which essays your essays are similar to in terms of score. Since mock essays usually have an explanation for their respective scores, you should see if your essay is lacking in similar ways.

The kindness of strangers

Urch.com is a popular GRE forum , which thousands of GRE aspirants visit each day. If you post your essay and ask for some feedback, someone may provide some (I’ve seen this happen before). While this someone may not be an expert, often a second pair of eyes can be helpful.

Other resources

One way to check your writing is to cut and paste the text into a Word doc. Are there many green lines (Word’s only slightly intrusive way of indicating that something may be grammatically awry)? By going into ‘Tools’ on the menu bar, you can get an explanation for what is wrong with your sentence.

Of course such analysis will tell you nothing of structure or logical flow of your ideas. Still, knowing that your grammar and spelling are not up to snuff can help you work to improve your score by as much as a point.

Though getting feedback on your AWA essays may be tough, don’t lose heart. Most likely one (if not more!) of the resources above will pan out. And don’t forget: nothing makes you a better writer than practice, feedback, practice, feedback.

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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Please leave any questions or suggestions in the comments, we try our best to respond within a few days! Your email address will not be published.

57 responses to “How to Get Your AWA Practice Essays Graded?”

Hi! I’m a customer and bought a premium account, but, unfortunately, your system does not rate paid customers’ essays. You should write about it

As a Premium student, remember that you can always reach out to us at [email protected] with questions or feedback 🙂

I’m not sure I understand what you’d like us to write about. We aren’t able to grade student essays, as we discuss in the FAQs on our plans page , but we provide you with knowledge and resources to be able to write a strong essay and evaluate your own work. Please let me know if I can answer any more questions about this 🙂

https://www.mbacrystalball.com/gre/gre-essay-grader Is this reliable?

wonderful article chris! i came across http://www.awaprofessor.com , and they evaluate AWA essays with both an expert human rater and a computer rater.

have you tried them before? any feedback on them?

Unfortunately, we do not have much experience with this site and it doesn’t seem like we can play around with it to learn too much more.

thanks for the reply magoosh! just to share, i submitted an essay to them and the feedback was really useful for me. there was even a 3-page section teaching me the secrets of official essay graders. Best of all. it took them less than a day to give me the feedback so if you who need your essays rated quickly, this is a great resource!

who exactly did you submit an essay to for this feedback? the service in the blog said they give scores only. Can you please clarify? I really need to improve my essays. thanks!

I believe the student submitted the essay to AWAProfessor. I used their service and found the essay report very beneficial.

I used them and I scored 6.0 for my AWA so I am very happy!

Hi as a GRE premium user can you please let me join the Magoosh GRE page on facebook. Thanks

Just email us at [email protected] and one of our team who has access to the Facebook group will be able to help! 🙂

Can anyone tell me that the ScoreItNow grades for AWA are nearly same as the actual GRE AWA score? Do anyone have any experience with that?

I am a premium user and I have requested to join the MAGOOSH GRE facebook group to find an essay evaluation buddy. I found the group via the link that Rachel has provided. Please accept me in the group. Thanks

Just accepted you!

All best, Jessica

Has anyone tried submitting essays on test big?

I bought cracking the gre (by the princeton review), it comes with 4 online practice exams. They grade your essays and provide general feedback on each. I was also told that Kaplan does the same with theirs as long as you email your essay to [email protected] .

Did you buy just the book and they grade your essays?

There are two different books in Amazon, which one did you buy?

1. Cracking the GRE with 4 Practice Tests 2. Cracking the GRE Premium Edition with 6 Practice Tests

Thanks a lot,

Hi Neil, Hopefully, this is not too late. But, I bought the Premium Edition with 6 practice tests. They had my essays graded and updated the score in my Princeton Review online profile.

Thank you Sudha. Never is too late. I am going to try.

@Dion, do we need to buy any course material for kaplan to grade our essay or is it free, please reply ASAP.

I have one doubt regarding AWA evaluation.

Does Manhattan 6 practice test that we can avail by purchasing one of the strategy guides evaluate our AWA section and give feed-backs?

Unfortunately, Manhattan does not give any feedback/evaluation on AWA. Luckily, you do have some options:

https://magoosh.com/gre/2013/how-to-get-your-awa-practice-essays-graded/

Hopefully, that helps 🙂

I found this tool called findscore ( http://www.findscore.com ) that evaluates AWA. It doesn’t really help in evaluating the structure of my essay. I have been following your blogs on AWA, so i don’t need much help from structure standpoint. I want to know if there are syntax errors in my essays. Is findscore reliable?.

I played around with Findscore a little just now—but not enough so I myself can give a reliable estimate of its value. It seems good. I basically wrote a pretty terrible ‘3’ level essay, and it gave me a ‘3’.

My only reservation is that the prompts are not taken from ETS. I only wrote on one prompt but it didn’t seem to be up to standard. That said, I’ll have to experiment with it a little more. But thanks for letting me know of this service 🙂

I doubt its credibility. I wrote an average argument task and obtained a score of 5. I had timed myself and could only write 305 words in the time frame. It had this interesting feature though , it gives a count of the organization phrases . I my case it was : Organization phrases count: 8 finally… final… perhaps… maybe… so that… however… but… even if…

I wonder how grades are impacted by the Organization phrases ?

I used the ScoreItNow feature and found no matter what I did, I got the same score … consistently. On test day I produced a lower scored essay. That being said, I really still don’t know what is required other than an introduction, content paragraphs containing examples, and a conclusion. Honestly, I probably could have made the essay longer, but I’m used to being concise, accurate and clear. I only gave 2 examples, so maybe that’s another issue.

Interestingly, I found a few people who reported that after requesting a rescore, they actually went down in score, whereas as one did go up a whole point. Most people generally kept their original score. I wish they would at least tell you what writing points you missed.

BTW, my verbal was 163 (91%), while my AW was 3.5 (34%). I have always had As in all my writing classes, so I should at least be average.

That’s the thing with ScoreitNow–you don’t receive any feedback on how to improve your writing, or at least make it more consistent with what the graders expect. Based on what you say, I’m guessing the essay was a little on the short side. Also, some students tend just to include vague examples without really showing how they relate to the thesis . Most of these essays are also too one-sided; the GRE rewards those essays that are able to take a position somewhere in the middle, and to articulate why they’ve taken such a position.

Have you checked out the other AWA posts on the Magoosh blog? They give you a better sense of what the graders are looking for. Manhattan GRE also gives a detailed breakdown of the essay.

And I’ve seen students go from the 3.5 range to 5.0. Given your strong verbal ability, I’m guessing you’ll fall into this group.

Best of luck!

I used the ScoreItNow service yesterday for a practice exam.

It’s actually pretty useful- it highlights all problem areas in your essay (runons, missing commas, transitions), as measured by their magic algorithms.

Plus you get an additional Analytical/argument areas graded for free, after you complete your first set, so 2 sets in total

That does sound helpful! At least from a syntax standpoint students will get a lot of help. Still, in terms of the structure of the essay, the validity and presentation of the examples/logic, it doesn’t look like ScoreItNow can help that much. Or maybe they are working on such an algorithm.

Hi, the web site http://www.gmatawa.com claims to do free evaluation of the essay, and interestingly, it throws up the score instantly once the essay is pasted. Is this web site reliable?

So I played around with the site a little, trying to figure out their algorithm. Don’t know how accurately it mirrors the GMAT’s own algorithm, but it seemed pretty easy to get top marks just by using the usual transitional words, paragraph formatting, and semi-complex sentence structure.

One area where the grader didn’t like me was in the “coherency” department. Apparently, I scored only 2 out of 5. As someone who sees all levels of coherence in student’s writing–from about 2 all the way up to 5–I don’t think my writing merits such a low score for “coherency” (I don’t think anyone would read my blog posts otherwise :)). Basically, the algorithm just isn’t that accurate–so I’d take its ratings with a grain of salt. Also, the site has a spell-checker, which I think is a little suspect :).

Hi everyone,i found one essay grader,Fatema ,she helps in essay grading and writing. This is her link on fb. https://www.facebook.com/FatemahnCompany/posts/563127833746357

Hmm…I’m not sure if she specifically targets GRE. It looks like she is a generalist–which isn’t a bad thing. However, without seeing any of her work, I can’t really recommend her.

If anyone has used her services and has something good to say, let me know :)!

Thanks for your reply 🙂 i understand ,but is there a difference between grading or editing GRE essay from other writings!i mean even if it is a bit different ,it will be easier even for a generalist to grade our essays,thats what i think leme know.

Anyways i checked her profile on elance https://www.elance.com/s/fatemahmirza/job-history/?t=1 seems like people like her work ,maybe that link will give you some insights on her abilities.

Umm…somewhat. I think there are some quirks to the GRE essay that an editor would have to be familiar with to give an accurate assessment of your essay and to help you improve. It sounds like she is a stellar editor. Just make sure she is familiar with the GRE essay format. Good luck :)!

hi Margarette,

How about twitter? 🙁 I dont have a facebook account.

Hi, Adesewa

Unfortunately, for Twitter we only have the GRE account: http://twitter.com/magooshgre , which isn’t really the same as the Magoosh student Facebook group :(. I’d recommend having some friends or family members read over your essays if you want a second set of eyes checking them!

Best, Margarette

Hi, I’d like to join the Magoosh group in Facebook . Thank you 🙂

Sure! 🙂 Same thing as Suryateja, just shoot an e-mail to [email protected] with your Magoosh username and we can send you the link.

Hello,I have sent a request to that group.Did not know about the existence of the group till now ! Would really appreciate it if you would accept my request.Thank you !

Hi Bidisha,

If you have sent a request, you should get a response soon! I expect after the weekend. 🙂

Hi Margarette

Even I am a premium user .I would love to partner for essay evaluation and grading. Can you please send me an invite for the group?

Thanks in advance 🙂 Suryateja

Hi, Suryateja

Sure! Can you email [email protected] with your username? I’ll send you the link once I can confirm you’re in our system. Thanks! 🙂

Chris, Thanks a lot for your invaluable suggestion in getting the feedback after writing an AWA essay. I have gone through your previous blogs which are on writing essay for an issue prompt and argument prompt. They are very helpful. I found your video lessons on the same as very practical and many tips from these lessons can be put to practice.

After reading the current blog, i thought of why not look for a GRE PREP friend among the blog readers who is eager to partner with me in doing a complementary review of the essays we write and provide feedback in accordance with the evaluation criteria published from ETS. I plan to appear the test in coming 2 months. Thanks

That’s a great idea! 🙂 I also noticed you’re a Premium Magoosh member– we have a Facebook group for our Premium GRE members that I just e-mailed you an invitation to. I’d recommend posting there as well to see if any other Magoosh students would be interested in partnering up for essay grading.

Even I am a premium user .I would love to partner for essay evaluation and grading. Can you please send me an invite for the group? 🙂

Thanks in advance Nishtha

Hi, Nishtha

Sure, just sent you an e-mail! 🙂

Hi I am a premium member and would also like the link if possible. Thanks in advance

You can find the link in the comments below. 🙂

Best, Rachel

Can you please send me an invite for AWA premum group?

Hi, Neha! If you’re a Magoosh GRE Premium student, you can email us at [email protected] and request the link to the private Magoosh GRE student FB group, where you can post about your essays. I hope that helps! 🙂

There is a Facebook group for premium members?

Hi, Courtney

Yep! I just sent you an e-mail with the link :).

I am a premium member and would also like the link if possible. Thanks in advance!

Hi Michelle,

You can request to join the group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/303992149648322/ . 🙂

Hello Margarette,

Can you please send me a invite to that group ?

I am a premium user. 🙂

Hey Siddharth! You can request to join the group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/303992149648322/ . 🙂

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How Long Should Your GRE Essay Be? [A Data Driven Answer]

By Jitta Raghavender Rao • GRE Writing

Every so often when I’m writing the GRE essays, I’ll think: Should I really be writing so much?

I tend to get carried away. And when that happens, it would be great to know if all this extra writing is actually helping me score better or hurting my AWA score. Of course, I want to impress the essay graders, but I want to do it the right way.

Students often ask me, how long their GRE essays should be because there is no concrete information out there about the “perfect” length of a GRE essay, and even if there is, much of that data is conflicting.

Some say essays aren’t graded mostly on length but the higher grades for a longer essay is a mere correlation between essay length and grades.

When it comes to the Analytical Writing section, essay length is very important, so if you are planning to get a perfect score, you might as well do it right.

But before we come down to the ideal length for an essay, let’s first crush this shocking myth that has been around for sometime:

[tweet “Ever wondered what the ideal length of a GRE essay is? Here’s the answer and much more..”]

Myth #1: Longer essays are the only way!

On the GRE, essay length is not only one of the factors taken into consideration. You have to check a host of other factors, if you are looking to get a perfect score. All the following factors affect your overall AWA score:

Clarity in Ideas – This is the most basic of all considerations. What are you trying to say? What’s your main point? This should be very clear by the time the grader finishes off reading the essay. Substance and content of your essay matters more than any other factor. Also, every logically supporting reason or example that you make use of should ultimately connect to this main idea. If it isn’t explicit, you are losing points!

Structure – The way an article is formatted, has a massive impact upon its readability. It’s important to break up your essay into paragraphs so the essay graders can easily scan it.

The general structure is to start with an introductory paragraph followed by 3-4 body paragraphs and finish off with a conclusion paragraph. So, make sure there are at least 5-6 paragraphs in your essay.

Sentence Variety – Consecutive sentences with the same structure and length can sound monotonous and lifeless. Instead of sounding repetitive and boring, use sentence style skillfully.

You should vary the sentence flow and the rhythm by switching between short and long sentences. You should also make use of transitional and signal words to vary sentence openings.

Vocabulary – Another myth about GRE essays is that the usage of GRE words in the essay has a correlation with the essay score. Not really! As long as you use proper grammar and 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.

Language and Grammar – Though ETS says you may have minor errors in the essay copy that do not interfere with overall meaning and coherence, the time you make your first error, the grader will notice it and this can have a negative impact on your AWA score. So, make sure your essay is as spotless as possible, and eliminate all errors before submitting.

Reasoning – You should include as many logically compelling reasons as you can to support your stance.

One of the most important aspects about a compelling essay is its ability to convince the reader by means of sound logical reasoning. So, 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 pay the penalty, no matter how long the essay is.

By no means am I saying that essay length isn’t important. I am only saying that essay length on the GRE isn’t the only thing you should be concerned about. I am also saying that essay length is just one of the factors out of many others that influence your AWA score.

Myth #2: ETS uses e-Rater software which grades essays on their content length

This is the most egregious of the myths, and it’s been around for a long time.

Recently, I read a post on Quora which asks “Do humans readers grade my GRE essays?” The top answer said, “They don’t.” His/her point was that a computer software called ‘e-rater’ scans your essay based on preset rules (natural language processing algorithms) and prints out a score, using a 6-point holistic scale.

That’s just not true.

In fact, E.T.S. claims this grading software is used today, along with human raters, to grade GRE and TOEFL examinations, and without human raters in various practice tests.

I want you to understand that if ETS were to use an automated essay grader to evaluate your essay then don’t you think gaming a software would be too easy? You must keep in mind that there is a human reader who will also grade your essay along with the e-rater, and both their scores are averaged to obtain the final AWA score. So, even if you try and game the software, the human reader will give you the actual score you deserve, which will bring down the average. So, there is no point in trying to game the e-rater. Instead, you should try other tactics, such as using impressive AWA quotes , or writing coherent paragraphs, which will naturally raise your score.

So to sum things up, both of these myths should be shunned in favor of a more strategic approach to essay length. Longer is not necessarily better. Shorter is not necessarily better. And human readers do actually read your essays.

So what’s the ideal length?

I see students wondering about this all the time and I am sure you are here to find out the same.

ETS has written about the ideal length nowhere, and still remains tight lipped on this. Also, there is no 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.

Longer 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 me 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.

Now It’s Your Turn

In the end, I warn you against getting stuck up on essay length. If you focus on word count only, then you would be scribbling gibberish and unnecessary sentences hoping to get a perfect 6.0 score. The essay substance and content matters more than the essay’s length.

There’s no magic number on word count that’s going to get you the perfect AWA score. At the same time, the statistics from the above analysis proves that longer essays tend to get higher scores.

If you’re still looking for word count, an essay that has around 500 – 600 words with around 5 paragraphs, and quality content, seems to be the ideal GRE essay length.

How long are your regular essays? What differences have you noticed between a long essay and short ones? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

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6 Comments to “How Long Should Your GRE Essay Be? [A Data Driven Answer]”

Thanks a lot!!! The article was very powerful, and interesting!!!

Hey Grisha, glad you found it helpful. 🙂

Thank you for the research you conducted and for the valuable as well as helpful information you provided.

I love this. Why isn’t this site more popular?

Truly speaking this research is well done, it covers all necessary points for passing the GRE test

This is awesome, thanks for sharing.

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How do I get scores for my essays? (Graduate)

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Title	How do I get scores for my essays? (Graduate)

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Please grade my issue essay. Would highly appreciate any feedback!

Issue 38: It is primarily through our identification with social groups that we define ourselves.

Task: Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement. You should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.

These days having an identity is important. As people desire to belong to a specific group, they define themselves in many ways. I disagree with this statement because social groups can be one way to define ourselves; however, it is not the primary(best, surest) method. This is because there are more important ways.

Admittedly, identification with a social group is one strong factor in defining people. These groups are created by the nation, and people categorize themselves to gain a sense of belonging. For a majority of people, social groups can be categorized by their schools, workplaces, clubs, and circles of friends. The caste system in India is a social group which proves how people define themselves through such groups as it portrays the social stratification and social restrictions. People in such a system are defined by endogamous hereditary groups, and from birth they are categorized into a certain group in which removal or change is merely impossible. In other words, people are defined by the social groups they are born into, and such inherent characteristic remains with the people throughout their life and until death. Thus people can be defined by their social groups.

Nevertheless, finding people’s identity through social group does not define people completely. This is because a select few have decided not to be bound by their social groups. To be specific, Galileo Galilei was a distinguished Italian astronomer who proved the Copernican theory that advocated the heliocentric model, the notion that the sun is located at the center of the world. While the society at the time adamantly believed in the notion that the Earth was the center of the universe, he was not defined by the society and its norms. Instead, he took the path less traveled, and through such differentiation he developed himself apart from such a group. Since the social group did not define him, he was able to rectify a misconception in the field of astronomy. Hence, individuals do not have to be defined by their social groups.

In addition, it must be noted that there are more important methods, such as people’s efforts, that define people. Thus, social groups are not the primary factors. To illustrate this point, long ago when discrimination towards black was prevalent, distinguished African-American civil rights activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks questioned the norm and fought to redefine the status of blacks in the US society. Since King did not comply with the inferior social category for Blacks, he encouraged other fellow Blacks to not be restricted by the social groups. Similarly, Parks set an example by resisting to racial segregation the US society forced upon their black citizens. Through the efforts of activists to refuse to the given social categories, the injustice that may be implied within the society can be fixed and as a result, individuals are able to have freedom and hope. In this regard, efforts, not complying with the given social groups, are a more pivotal factor to define people.

In brief, people are defined by social groups, but they are not the pivotal method. Hence, members of society should go the extra mile to discover themselves apart from such groups.

Many thanks in advance! :)

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Gre prep online guides and tips, gre argument essay: how to get a perfect 6 score.

Of all the various types of questions on the GRE, Analytical Writing questions can seem like the trickiest ones to answer perfectly. Not only do you have to write hundreds of words to answer the Argument essay GRE question, but there’s also no one set correct answer that you can give and automatically get it right.

So how do you reliably score well on the GRE Argument essay? In this article, we’ll focus in on what goes into a high-scoring response and offer some GRE Argument essay tips to help you consistently write essays that meet those standards.

Do You Need a Perfect GRE Argument Essay Score?

Practically speaking, no, you don’t need a perfect 6.0 on the Argument essay. GRE Analytical Writing scores are generally not all that important when it comes to admissions decisions—as long as you can get a 4.5, you’ll be set for most schools.

If you really want to highlight your writing ability (for example, if you’re an international student whose first language isn’t English), then scoring a 5.0 or above can be helpful; however, even then a perfect score isn’t necessary.

Some writing intensive programs do have GRE Writing score cutoffs, but none of these cutoffs are going to be above a 4.5 . You can get a better idea of what GRE Writing score cutoffs for different programs are with our article about what makes a good GRE Writing score .

There are a few doctoral programs (e.g. UChicago’s PoliSci Ph.D. ) that have higher average GRE scores, but that’s more of a side-effect of the applicant pool than because that’s something the admissions committees look for. Students applying to top-notch doctoral programs in the humanities and social sciences will need to have strong analytical writing skills, yes, but this is usually presented through writing portfolios or other materials required by grad schools .

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What Makes a Perfect-Scoring GRE Argument Essay?

To get the most accurate picture of what goes into a perfect GRE Argument essay, we’ll turn to the official scoring rubric . This is the chart that the human GRE essay graders use for scoring the Argument essay on the real test, so it’s the best standard against which to hold your own practice essays.

Below, I’ve done a side-by-side comparison of the different criteria needed to get a 4.0 vs. a 6.0 on the Argument essay GRE question.


In addressing the specific task directions, a 4 response presents a competent examination of the argument and conveys meaning with acceptable clarity.	In addressing the specific task directions, a 6 response presents a cogent, well-articulated examination of the argument and conveys meaning skillfully.	A 4 essay accomplishes the bare minimum of inspecting and breaking down the argument in a clear fashion. A 6 essay not only meets this bar, but also analyzes the argument insightfully and thoroughly explains the major points of the argument under the umbrella of the task.
identifies and examines aspects of the argument relevant to the assigned task, but may also discuss some extraneous points	clearly identifies aspects of the argument relevant to the assigned task and examines them insightfully	A 6 essay delves into the argument’s structure and its implications more deeply, staying focused on the parts of the argument that relate back to the task at hand.
develops and organizes ideas satisfactorily, but may not connect them with transitions	develops ideas cogently, organizes them logically and connects them with clear transitions	A 6 essay not only develops ideas, but does so logically (and connects them to each other in a way that makes sense).
supports its main points adequately, but may be uneven in its support	provides compelling and thorough support for its main points	A 4 essay supports all its main points, but may only delve into the complexities of the points in some cases, whereas a 6 essay has equally strong and thorough support for all its main points.
demonstrates sufficient control of language to convey ideas with reasonable clarity. Generally demonstrates control of the conventions of standard written English, but may have some errors	conveys ideas fluently and precisely, using effective vocabulary and sentence variety. Demonstrates superior facility with the conventions of standard written English (i.e., grammar, usage and mechanics), but may have minor errors	A 4 essay conveys its meaning clearly enough, while a 6 essay is extremely well written. If you want to achieve a 6, you’ll need to vary your sentence structure and use advanced vocabulary accurately and appropriately.

I know there is a lot of information to process in that chart, so I’ve summarized it below by extracting the most important points. A good GRE Argument essay:

Must limit its discussion to identifying and explaining the parts of the argument that are relevant to the essay task
Must develop its ideas logically
Must be organized and connect ideas smoothly
Must include support for the main points of the author’s analysis
Must be well-written

To get a perfect score on the Argument essay, you must display mastery with each one of these items .

Official GRE Argument Essay, Analyzed

Now that we’ve gone over the rubric in the abstract, it’s time to apply it to a high-scoring essay. By taking the rubric criteria and looking at how they are exemplified by a real essay, you’ll be able to get a better feel for what exactly it takes to get a perfect score .

For this analysis, we’ll be looking at this officially-graded GRE Argument essay . Here’s the prompt the essay was written in response to:

In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes little of its budget to maintaining riverside recreational facilities. For years there have been complaints from residents about the quality of the river’s water and the river’s smell. In response, the state has recently announced plans to clean up Mason River. Use of the river for water sports is therefore sure to increase. The city government should for that reason devote more money in this year’s budget to riverside recreational facilities.

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.

The sample Argument essay we’ll be looking at discusses and disputes three different assumptions made by the argument :

That the survey is a reliable measure of preferences and should be used as a source of information to inform budget planning.
That there is a link between the river’s odor and pollution and the lack of residents’ recreational use of the river.
That plans to clean up Mason River will be effective.

To analyze this essay, I’ll highlight places where the essay fulfills each of the criteria for the 6.0 GRE Writing score level. The first of these rubric criteria is a description of what a perfect-scoring Argument essay should look like overall:

Rubric description : In addressing the specific task directions, a 6 response presents a cogent, well-articulated examination of the argument and conveys meaning skillfully.

This description of what a perfect Argument essay should look like is much more general than the rest of the other rubric items and is more meant as a summary of what the other four items indicate than as a specific criterion in and of itself. If an essay meets all of the other four rubric requirements for a 6.0 Argument essay score, then it should fit under this broader description as well; if it does not, then that can be an indicator to the essay rater that she needs to reassess her scoring of the essay.

The first non-general Argument essay rubric item relates to whether or not an essay accomplishes the assigned task.

Rubric description : A 6 essay clearly identifies aspects of the argument relevant to the assigned task and examines them insightfully

The sample essay succeeds in meeting both parts of this criterion. In the essay, the author pinpoints three different assumptions of the argument (survey is reliable, water being dirty is why people don’t use it for recreational sports, and cleaning it will work). Each of these claims is a key assumption upon which the argument depends, since if any one of these three claims proved unfounded, then the argument becomes illogical.

The author also “examines [the assumptions] insightfully” by discussing the implications of each assumption and what it would mean for the argument were the assumptions to prove false . If the author had merely identified the key elements of the argument without this kind of discussion, the essay would have received a lower score. Below is an excerpt from the essay that illustrates an instance of the author fulfilling this criterion:

“If the river’s water quality and smell result from problems which can be cleaned, [that a river clean up will result in increased river usage] may be true… But if the quality and aroma results from the natural mineral deposits in the water or surrounding rock, this may not be true.”

In this excerpt, the author points out an assumption of the argument (that the quality and smell problems from the river can be dealt with) and presents the implications if the assumption is unwarranted (if the problems are from mineral deposits, quality and smell change might not be possible). The clear way in which the author gets to the point (if A, then B may be true…but if not A, then B may not be true) and the insight she uses in determining why the assumption might not be true and what effect that might have all contribute to this essay achieving a 6-level score.

"You don't have to be a detective to write the essay, but it helps*!" *does not actually help. All you need is adequate preparation.

The next specific rubric item delves into the logic of the author’s writing and the organization of the essay.

Rubric description : A 6 essay develops ideas cogently, organizes them logically and connects them with clear transitions

While the previous rubric item is concerned with the author’s ability to pick apart the logic of the argument in the prompt, this item focuses in on the author’s own writing style and her ability to logically develop and connect ideas in the Argument essay. GRE guidelines for both the Issue and Argument essay place a premium on clear logic and organization, both in terms of how ideas are linked within a paragraph as well as on a larger scale.

For the Argument essay, it makes sense to group your discussion of each assumption into its own separate paragraph. However, if you want to get a perfect essay score, you can’t just throw in information about the assumption and its implications willy-nilly, without a care for its organization. Instead, you must make sure that each of your points about the assumption is directly followed by support for that point. This clarity of development allows the reader to follow your logic more easily, which in turn makes your essay that much more persuasive and effective.

In the Argument essay, organization and logic are also important when it comes to ordering the paragraphs of your essay and transitioning between ideas. Here’s an example of a transition that connects the ideas of two consecutive paragraphs:

“Building upon the implication that residents do not use the river due to the quality of the river’s water and the smell, the author suggests that a river clean up will result in increased river usage.”

This sentence begins the fourth paragraph of the essay and logically transitions to the new assumption about to be discussed (“river clean up will result in increased river usage”) by referencing the idea just discussed in the third paragraph (“residents do not use the river due to the quality of the river’s water and the smell”). The sentence structure “building upon the implication that…the author suggests that” connects the two ideas skillfully, strengthening the link between the two paragraph by framing it as a logical progression.

The clear and logical way in which the author develops her points within each paragraph and the tight organizational connections between paragraphs are how the essay exemplifies this rubric item.

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On the other hand, a dirty river means more residents on the river trying to clean it up, so...at least there's that? Gabriela Avram/Flickr.

The third non-general item on the GRE Argument essay rubric is focused entirely on how well the author supports her points.

Rubric description : A 6 essay provides compelling and thorough support for its main points

Essentially, this rubric item is all about determining whether or not an author properly supports her ideas and their development throughout the essay. Correctly identifying assumptions and examining them in a logical and organized way is all very well and good and satisfies the first two rubric criteria, but if you don’t support your analysis with either scenarios from the argument or hypothetical scenarios that could also explain assumptions made in the argument, you’re not going to get a perfect score.

Here’s an excerpt from the essay that demonstrates an instance of “compelling and thorough support”:

“Additionally, the author implies that residents do not use the river for swimming, boating, and fishing, despite their professed interest, because the water is polluted and smelly. While a polluted, smelly river would likely cut down on river sports, a concrete connection between the resident’s lack of river use and the river’s current state is not effectively made. Though there have been complaints, we do not know if there have been numerous complaints from a wide range of people, or perhaps from one or two individuals who made numerous complaints.”

The first sentence of this excerpt lays out the assumption made in the argument: the reason people don’t use the water for sport is because it’s dirty and odiferous. The next two sentences support the author’s claim that this assumption is unfounded in two important ways:

#1: The author singles out a particular way in which the argument is flawed , stating that “a concrete connection…is not effectively made” between two specific claims linked in the argument.

#2: The author explains why the argument is flawed by presenting relevant details, like the fact that the source of the complaints is unknown and could potentially be just a few people.

The reasoning and support used by the author in her essay are effective because the author explains clearly the ways in which they support her points. If the author had just said, “There is no clear connection between the lack of river use and the river’s polluted state because it could just be a few people complaining,” the link between the number of people complaining and why this matters for the validity of the complaints would’ve been unclear and the support would be less compelling.

It turned out that it was just Fry the cat complaining about the river water all along. Umberto Salvagnin/Flickr.

The final rubric area for the Argument essay has to do with how skillfully an essay is written and how well it adheres to the standards of written English.

Rubric description : A 6 essay conveys ideas fluently and precisely, using effective vocabulary and sentence variety. Demonstrates superior facility with the conventions of standard written English (i.e., grammar, usage and mechanics), but may have minor errors

This last group of items on the Argument essay rubric gets into the mechanics of how well the author writes. The two ways in which this is effected are through the precise use of language and general dearth of errors . Here’s an example of an effective use of language in the sample essay:

“While a polluted, smelly river would likely cut down on river sports, a concrete connection between the resident’s lack of river use and the river’s current state is not effectively made.”

The precise language in this sentence successfully differentiates between the “likely” correlation that is made in the prompt and the “concrete connection” that is not made. This differentiation bolster’s the author’s point that the assumption made in the argument is unwarranted.

The second part of this set of rubric items has to do with the author’s ability to write in standard English without making too many errors. This is demonstrated throughout the mostly error-free sample essay; the errors that do remain, like “afffected” in paragraph four, do not impede the reader’s understanding of what the author is trying to say.

This last point is a good distillation of what all the rubric items for a perfect-scoring essay are trying to capture: a 6.0 GRE Argument essay is one that is clear and precise, whether in ideas, analysis, support, development, organization, or language .

Get it get its "current" state but it's also a river so it has its own current so...you know what, I'll just see myself out. Karyn Christner/Flickr.

6 Steps to a 6.0: GRE Argument Essay Tips

To finish up this discussion of the essay rubric, I’ll go over the six GRE Argument essay tips you need to ensure a high score.

#1: Focus on the Task

One of the core skills you must master in order to score at all well on the GRE Argument essay is being able to analyze the structure and logic of the arguments , rather than getting caught up in whether you agree or disagree with the points being made.

It may be difficult to do this at first, as it can be hard to be objective when the subject being argued about is one you have firm opinions on or when the logical flaws of the argument are so obvious it drives you crazy. Part of practicing and preparing for the GRE Argument essay task, though, is learning how to channel that irritation and outrage into an unflinching analysis and explanation of how the argument works and where it falls apart.

#2: Hit Major Points Only

Making sure you analyze the argument (rather than agreeing or disagreeing with its position) is only the first step to writing a successful GRE Argument essay, though. You’ll also need to make sure that in your dissection of the argument, your main focus stays on the major features of the argument that add (or detract from) the argument’s effectiveness.

With only 30 minutes to complete the argument task, your job is not to be comprehensive, but to analyze the points that matter. Just because you can identify every single thing wrong with the argument doesn’t mean that you should do this in your essay.

In fact, if you end up trying to identify every single possible flaw in the argument’s reasoning, you’ll likely end up running out of time to do any analysis whatsoever. And while finding the flaws in the argument is an important part of the GRE Argument essay, an equally important part is explaining in a coherent and unified way why the flaws matter.

Let’s consider the Mason City riverfront prompt again as an example.

There’s a lot of information in the prompt to mull over, and it can be tempting to leap into analyzing the first problematic assumption you notice, even if isn’t a major issue. Don’t fall prey to this temptation! It may be true that the prompt assumes that water sports can only be perpetrated on a river (rather than in a pool or the ocean), but the argument depends on this fact far less than it does on the assumption that the river’s bad smell and quality is why Mason City residents rarely use the Mason River for water sports.

The importance of keeping your analysis to major points is supported by the ideas and analysis rubric item: a 4-scoring essay “may also discuss some extraneous points”, while a 6-scoring essay only covers “aspects of the argument relevant to the assigned task.”

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Boating in a pool is totally possible. These guys get it. Baltimore RecNParks/Flickr.

#3: Keep Your Essay Organized

Because the GRE Argument essay involves critiquing someone else’s argument, rather than building your own, it may be difficult to see at first how you can keep your essay organized. In this case, as with many other types of essay, the five-paragraph essay form is your friend.

To start your essay, you will need to introduce the bare bones of what the argument is arguing. For the sample argument we went through above, those bare bones are that the Mason City government should spend more money this year on riverside recreational facilities. You must also include at least a general description of the thrust of your analysis (whether or not the argument is supported, if there are holes in the argument, or if the argument is more true than not). Ideally, these two points will connect to each other in a lean fashion, like in the introduction of this sample essay :

While it may be true that the Mason City government ought to devote more money to riverside recreational facilities, this author’s argument does not make a cogent case for increased resources based on river use. It is easy to understand why city residents would want a cleaner river, but this argument is rife with holes and assumptions, and thus, not strong enough to lead to increased funding.

In each of the three body paragraphs of your essay, you should discuss the three major components of the argument that go to prove your point. Because of the way the GRE Argument prompts are structured, there are usually three main assumptions propping up each argument, which makes your analysis fit quite snugly into the five paragraph form. If you only end up discussing two major questions or assumptions from the argument, it’s perfectly fine to end up with two body paragraphs, but you should keep in mind that if you have time, there might be a third avenue of the argument that’s worth exploring.

Finally, conclude your essay with a reference to your introduction and incorporation of some of the points you made. This conclusion can be short, depending on how you’re doing for time and brainpower by the time you get to it, but including at least some sort of conclusion statement is an important part of keeping your essay organized.

Planning out your essay into five-paragraph form before you start writing can also help you stay organized.

#4: Do Mock Analyses of Real GRE Essay Prompts

There are 176 possible topics you’ll be asked to write about on the GRE Argument essay, and all of them are available for free online . Because of this wealth of real essay topics, it’s unlikely that you’ll run out of prompts you can write practice essays on (unless you’re planning on spending 88 hours doing practice GRE Argument essays). Therefore, it’s safe to do practice outlines , rather than entire practice essays, for a portion of these prompts.

Writing mock Argument essay outlines is good practice if you’re fine with explaining your thoughts but are struggling with speedily analyzing arguments. Even if you have difficulty with both these aspects of the Argument task, creating outlines is still good practice because it will at least help you increase your analytical skills; once you’ve bolstered your ability to analyze an argument under time pressure, you can then proceed to writing full-length practice essays.

For each prompt you choose to outline, come up with at least three points of analysis and a few sentences to explain the importance of each point. These points of analysis could be assumptions made in the argument, the evidence that’s needed to successfully evaluate the argument, alternative explanations or arguments that could be made based on the facts presented in the task, and so on. Make sure, however, to follow step two above and only discuss points that are central to the argument.

You don't have to play through the entire piece or write an entire essay every time you practice. Sometimes, targeted practice is just as valuable. Wolfgang Lonien/Flickr.

#5: Analyze Sample GRE Essays

The rubric is a good way to grade your own essays, but it can sometimes be hard to know how to take the abstract criteria from the scoring guidelines and apply them to a real essay.

Fortunately, in addition to the free and publicly available sample argument essay I analyzed earlier, sample Argument essays at several different score levels are included in chapters 8 and 9 of The Official Guide to the GRE revised General Test (2nd Ed.) . You can maximize the value of these sample essays by not only reading them over but by also taking the GRE Argument essay rubric and applying it to them.

Use the major differences I pointed out in the 4-vs.-6 Writing score level comparison and my analysis of the 6-scoring sample GRE Argument essay to help you identify features that make the example essays so high-scoring. Make sure to note both what the authors do well and why what they do is effective . The official GRE reader commentary that goes along with each sample essay is also a valuable resource you should use to supplement your analysis and ensure you haven’t missed anything.

You should not copy exact words or phrases from the perfect-scoring essays to use in your own work (that’s plagiarism, which is not permitted on the GRE). Instead, observe how other students successfully earned high essay scores and plan out how you can emulate them.

#6: Leave Time to Revise

The word processor you use to write the Issue and Argument essays on the GRE does not have the standard amenities of autocorrect, spell check, or grammar check, which means you’re likely to make typos and not notice it. You’re also going to be typing under time pressure, which may lead you to make more errors than usual. Because of this, it’s imperative you check over your essay before submitting it.

Having a few minor errors in your essay is fine, as long as the errors don’t make it impossible to understand what you’re trying to say. However, if there are too many typos and in mistakes in your essays, the essay graders (both human and computer) will have difficulty understanding what you’re trying to say and following your analysis, and so will not be able to give you a high score.

Example 1: Not revised, major errors (grammar, spelling, and punctuation)

One of ht ecornerstones of the argument is that the fewer. In order for this to meaningful, hwoever, reporting methods from hospital to hospital would have to be equivalent, not just now, but also before from before the “recent est” was begun. wihtout having a reliable baseline it, would be imposisble to know if fhte measured reduction in patient infection gy harmful bacteria was all meaningful.

Example 2: Revised, some minor errors remaining

One of the cornerstones of the argument is that the hospitals reported fewer pateint infections after using UltraClean. In order for this to matter, however, reporting methods from hospital to hospital would have to be equivalent. Furthermore, the methods of reporting patient infection would have to have been equivalent before the “recent test” was begun. Without having a reliable baseline, it would be imposisble to know if fhte measured reduction in patient infection by harmful bacteria was at all meaningful.

Mr. Money and Mr. Green Pentagon Head, Esq. both came down with infections after their visit to the hospital. If only the hospital had used UltraClean!

What’s Next?

Now you have a better understanding of what it takes to get a perfect score on the Argument essay, but what about on the other half of Analytical Writing? Find out with our exploration of what it takes to get a perfect score on the GRE Issue essay and our analyses of perfect scoring GRE essay samples .

How well your essay matches up with the criteria in this essay rubric is just part of the GRE essay story. Learn more about how exactly GRE Writing is scored here !

I’ve discussed in this article about how a good GRE essay score isn’t necessarily a perfect score, but the same doesn’t necessarily follow for the rest of the GRE. Read more about how to decide on what’s a good GRE score for you here .

Ready to improve your GRE score by 7 points?

Author: Laura Staffaroni

Laura graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a BA in Music and Psychology, and earned a Master's degree in Composition from the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She scored 99 percentile scores on the SAT and GRE and loves advising students on how to excel and fulfill their college and grad school dreams. View all posts by Laura Staffaroni

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Best Moment of My Life

Categories: Personal Experience Self Reflection

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Words: 906 |

Published: Jun 6, 2024

Words: 906 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

The unexpected journey, a moment of connection, the ripple effect, reflections and future aspirations.

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School Education /

How I Spent My Summer Vacation Essay in English

Updated on
Jun 7, 2024

It’s the month of May and the most anticipated time has finally arrived. Do you know why students wait all year for May? It’s summer vacation and your family has planned a trip to a hill station in Himachal Pradesh. Well, this is just a common summer vacation plan most families plan for, but I am sure you might also have a somewhat similar plan for your summer vacation. So, today, we will provide samples of how I spent my summer vacation essay in English.

Table of Contents

1 Sample 1: How I Spend My Summer Vacation Essay
2 Sample 2: How I Spend My Summer Vacation Essay
3 How I Spend My Summer Vacation Essay: Sample 3

Sample 1: How I Spend My Summer Vacation Essay

This summer vacation I visited the Ram Temple in Ayodhya with my family and cousins. We booked the Vande Bharat tickets and started our holy journey from New Delhi Railway Station. It was an 11-hour-long journey and was full of excitement. I have never experienced a journey so beautiful.

Throughout our journey, we chanted the ‘Jai Shree Ram’ mantra and sang holy songs. When we reached the Lucknow Central Station, the Ticket Collector told us that we’d reached halfway.
It took us another 5 hours to reach the holy city of Ayodhya. My brother and I wanted to explore the city, so we stepped outside. Then we headed to the Ram Mandir. The temple was huge and very beautiful. It was decorated with colourful lights and flowers. There were many people there, all looking very happy and excited.

Inside the temple, we saw the idol of Lord Ram. It was adorned with beautiful jewels made of gold, diamond, and silver! The priests were singing bhajans, and the atmosphere was very peaceful. We prayed and spent some time sitting quietly, feeling the divine presence. My parents told me stories about Lord Ram, and I felt very happy to learn more about him.

After visiting the temple, we explored the city of Ayodhya. We visited other historical places and temples. Each place had its own unique story and charm. We also enjoyed the local food, which was very tasty. My favourite was the special sweets they made in Ayodhya.

Then, after coming back from the trip, I completed my homework and drafted a study plan.

Quick Read: Essay on Child Labour in 1000 Words

Sample 2: How I Spend My Summer Vacation Essay

This summer vacation, I planned to work to improve my physical and mental health. Close to my home, there is a fitness centre I joined this summer, where I was assigned a personal fitness trainer. She was a qualified trainer who asked me about my goals and drafted a fitness and diet routine accordingly. Initially, I took a 1 month- subscription, as I was not sure how good or bad it would turn out to be. The first week was very challenging as I had to work out for 2 hours straight and then practice yoga for 30 minutes. Every day after coming from the fitness centre, I used to complete my homework and read the newspaper.

In one week, I was able to do 20 pushups in one set and I wanted to set the bar high. So, I planned on doing 40 pushups before completing 1 month at the fitness center. The trainers were very helpful and taught me the right way to do each exercise. They made sure I was safe and enjoying myself. They also encouraged me and made me feel confident.

One of the best parts of joining the fitness centre was making new friends. There were many kids my age, and we quickly became friends. We exercised together, cheered each other on, and had a lot of fun. We even played games like tag and basketball in the centre’s sports area. Having friends around made exercising even more enjoyable.

Joining the fitness centre was a fantastic experience. It helped me become stronger, healthier, and more confident. I made new friends and learned a lot about staying fit and healthy. I am grateful for the opportunity and look forward to continuing my fitness journey.

Quick Read: Essay on Summer Vacation

How I Spend My Summer Vacation Essay: Sample 3

This summer vacation, I planned a trip to Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh with my family. My holiday homework assignments from math, science, and English. I decided to finish my homework early so that I could enjoy the rest of my vacation without any worries.

Every morning, I dedicated a few hours to studying and completing my assignments. My mom and dad helped me whenever I needed it. They explained difficult concepts and made learning fun. By the end of the first week, I had completed most of my homework. This made me feel very accomplished and ready to enjoy my vacation fully.

After finishing my homework, my parents planned a trip to a hill station in Himachal Pradesh. I was very excited because I had never visited a hill station before. We packed our bags with warm clothes, as it was cooler in the hills, and set off on our journey.
We booked train tickets, and the journey was amazing. As we reached Shimla, I was amazed to see the mountains, and the scenery became more and more beautiful. We saw tall trees, flowing rivers, and even some waterfalls. The air was fresh and cool, and I enjoyed every moment of the drive. We stopped at several viewpoints to take pictures and enjoy the breathtaking views.

When we reached the hill station, I was in awe of its beauty. The town was surrounded by green hills and tall pine trees. Our hotel was cosy and offered a stunning view of the mountains. The people there were very friendly and welcoming.

Every day was an adventure. We visited many tourist spots like waterfalls, temples, and parks. One day, we went for a hike in the forest. It was a little tiring but very exciting. We saw different kinds of birds and even spotted some monkeys playing in the trees.

The trip to Dharamshala was fun and educational. I learned about the local culture and traditions. We visited some old temples and my parents told me interesting stories about the history of the place. I also learned about different types of plants and animals that are found in the hills.
This is how I spent my summer vacation. I completed my holiday homework, stayed disciplined throughout the trip, and spent quality time with my family.

Quick Read: Essay on Summer Season

Ans: This summer vacation, my family planned a trip to Sikkim, which is one of the most beautiful and peaceful states in India. This small state, located between the Himalayas, is home to just 5 lakh Indians and is renowned for its rich biodiversity. We booked flights from New Delhi to Gangtok and after landing, I would feel the fresh atmosphere around me. People in Sikkim speak English, Nepali, Sikkimese (Bhutia), Leptcha, and Hindi, and it was very exciting to explore places that I’ve only seen on the National Geographic Channel.

Ans: This summer, I visited a famous hill station; Nainital with my family. It is a small town in the mountains of Uttarakhand, India. We booked a traveller and the journey was long but very exciting. As we drove up the winding roads, I saw tall trees, green hills, and cool streams flowing down the mountains. We also visited a place called Snow View Point. We went there by a ropeway, which is like a cable car that goes up the mountain. From the top, I could see the snow-covered peaks of the Himalayas. It looked like a picture from a storybook!

Ans: This summer vacation, I planned a trip to Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh with my family. My holiday homework assignments were in math, science, and English. I decided to finish my homework early so that I could enjoy the rest of my vacation without any worries. Every morning, I dedicated a few hours to studying and completing my assignments. My mom and dad helped me whenever I needed it. They explained difficult concepts and made learning fun. By the end of the first week, I had completed most of my homework. This made me feel very accomplished and ready to enjoy my vacation fully.

Shiva Tyagi

With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

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GMAT Vs. GRE: Which Schools Prefer Which Test — And Which (Still) Don’t Require Any

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Two things can be true at once. In 2024, far fewer business schools allow applicants to submit their applications without an entrance exam score than did so in the previous three years. The era of test-optional admissions is over at all but a handful of B-schools.

Also true: Despite the renewed pressure on MBA candidates to sit for an exam, the years-long slump for the Graduate Management Admission Test — long considered the essential exam for admission to graduate business programs — continues. More people simply aren’t taking the GMAT.

More are, however, turning to its chief rival.

As GMAT submission rates continue to fall — especially at the top 25 U.S. B-schools , but generally across the top 50 — the Graduate Record Exam is surging . According to data from the April release of U.S. News & World Report ’s annual MBA ranking , around half of the top 50 schools reported increases in the rate of GRE submissions in 2023.

HIGHEST GRE SUBMISSION RATES AMONG TOP-50 B-SCHOOLS IN 2023


15	53%	45%
3	42%	38%
33	41%	44%
1	39%	33%
44	39%	15%
5	37%	39%
6	37%	36%
24	37%	49%
31	37%	30%
9	36%	30%

Source: U.S. News & World Report and school websites

The gmat continues to lose ground to its chief rival.

Poets&Quants has written for years about the decline in GMAT test-taking and submission rates . In 2023, the slump continued apace: The number of B-schools in the P&Q top 50 with greater than 50% submission rates of GMAT scores declined to just 11 from 18 in 2022; nine schools remained above 60% in 2023, mostly in the upper echelons ( including five of the M7 schools ), but only one school — Florida Warrington College of Business — reported that more than 70% of applicants submitted a GMAT score, down from five schools the year before. (See details on GMAT submission percentages on page 2.)

Conversely, schools below 50% GMAT submission increased to 41 in 2023 from 32, while the ranks of those below 40% grew to 35 from 21. Those below 30% doubled in number to 20. Meanwhile the number of schools at 25% or more GRE submissions grew in one year to 30 from 23.

In the top 10, the GMAT still reigns by a wide margin — but it’s slimming. The average percentage of GMAT submissions among the 10 highest-ranked B-schools was 50% in 2023, down from 55% in 2022, while GRE submissions grew slightly, to 32.3% from 31.1%. Across the top 25, the picture is similar, with GMAT rate falling to 46.5% from 54.2% and GRE inching up to 30.6% from 29.6%.

Thirty-nine B-schools overall (out of 49 for which data was available) lost GMAT volume in 2023. Eighteen were by double digits. The biggest declines:

29 points at Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business , to 40%
25 points at Washington Foster School of Business , to 39%
24 points at Rutgers Business School , to 35%
24 points at Pittsburgh Katz School of Business , to 30%
22 points at Emory Goizueta Business School , to 28%
19 points at Rice Jones Graduate School of Business , to 20%
18 points at Rochester Simon Business School , to 21%
18 points at Ohio State Fisher College of Business , to 18%

And the lowest rate of GMAT submission in 2023: Northeastern D’Amore-McKim School of Business , at just 4%. Both George Washington School of Business and William and Mary Mason School of Business were near the bottom at 10%.

HIGHEST GMAT SUBMISSION RATES IN 2023


25	72%	54%
2	69%	74%
12	67%	76%
31	67%	71%
13	65%	77%
11	63%	73%
5	62%	58%
1	61%	67%
3	61%	68%

MORE THAN 30% OF 54 RANKED SCHOOLS GOT MORE GRE THAN GMAT SUBMISSIONS IN 2023

Looking at the year-over-year change in GRE submissions in the last two- and seven-year periods, the rise of the GRE is clear. From 2022 to 2023, 23 schools saw increases (out of 45 for which there is enough data to compare), including 14 of the top 25, and seven by double digits; 19 schools saw GRE declines. But since 2017, 30 schools are up — including 19 by double digits — and only nine down. The biggest gain in the latter span has been at UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business , which saw its GRE submission rate grow by 43 percentage points to 53%, making the Haas School the only one in the P&Q top 50 to currently eclipse 50% GRE submissions. Other noteworthy increases in that seven-year period: Dartmouth Tuck School of Business , up 27 points to 42%; both the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Duke Fuqua School of Business up 26 points to 37%; and Virginia Darden School of Business , up 26 points to 34%.

The number of B-schools with more GRE than GMAT in 2023 grew to 16 of 53, or more than 30% of schools in the top half (or adjacent to it) of the P&Q ranking; in 2022, in the same group of schools, only eight (17.4%) had more GRE than GMAT submissions.

Of the 19 of 45 schools to lose GRE submission volume between 2022 and 2023, seven were by double digits, with the biggest decline at Florida Warrington, where GRE subs fell 40 percentage points to just 6%. Other noteworthy declines: 23 points at UC-Irvine Merage School of Business , to 6%; 20 points at Washington-St. Louis Olin Business School , to 27%; and 14 points at Utah Eccles School of Business , to 24%.

Twelve of 45 schools lost ground in both GMAT and GRE rates of submission; one school — Boston Questrom — gained in both: to 27% from 17% GMAT, and to 28% from 18% GRE.

BIGGEST GRE SUBMISSION RATE GROWTH 2022-2023


18	31%	7%
44	39%	15%
17	32%	9%
26	27%	16%
30	27%	16%
52	33%	23%

2024 APPLICANTS PROBABLY WILL HAVE TO TAKE THE GMAT OR GRE TO APPLY TO A TOP B-SCHOOL

A central question for the MBA candidate today: Can you still get into a top school without taking an entrance exam?

The answer is yes, but the window is closing fast.

Only 10 schools out of 54 examined by P&Q allowed applicants to apply to their MBA programs in the 2022-2023 cycle without providing a test score. That was down from 14 schools in 2021-2022. An even bigger shift: Only eight schools allow waivers — down in one year from 23.

Where a test score is required: 34 B-schools, including eight of the P&Q top 10. That’s up from just 13 schools in 2021-2022 (of which 10 were in the top 12). Nineteen schools went from waivers or no test requirement to requiring a test; zero schools went the other way, from requiring a test to not requiring one, or to offering waivers.

Among the schools that changed in the past year: NYU Stern, Virginia Darden, CMU Tepper, Emory Goizueta, USC Marshall, Indiana Kelley School of Business , and Georgetown McDonough School of Business all went from waiver to required; Washington Olin, Rutgers, and Penn State Smeal College of Business went from not required to required.

How have waiver/test-optional policies affected submission rates? At 33 schools with no waiver in 2023, the average GMAT rate was 40.7%; in 2022, at 13 schools with no test-optional policy, it was 57.8%. At 10 schools with no test required, GMAT submissions sank to 27.7% (from 39.1% at 13 schools in 2022); and at the eight schools with conditional waivers, the rate was 35.8% — down from 41.3% at 22 schools in 2022.

For the GRE, the average submission rate at schools with no waiver was 25.8% at 35 schools in 2023, down from 36.4% at 11 schools in 2022. The average at schools with no test required was 24.4% (10 schools), up from 19.6% in 2022 (13 schools); and the average at schools with conditional waivers was 28.1% (eight schools), up slightly from 26.8% in 2022 (22 schools).

BIGGEST GMAT SUBMISSION RATE GROWTH 2022-2023


25	72%	54%	+18
41	27%	17%	+10
40	33%	24%	+9
32	47%	39%	+8
5	62%	58%	+4

See the next page for data on GMAT and GRE submission rates and test requirements at the top 54 U.S. business schools from 2022 to 2023; and page 3 for GRE submission rates over the last seven years.

Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below.

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The best moment of my life was not an endpoint but a starting point, a catalyst for a future filled with endless possibilities. This is only a sample. Get a custom paper now from our expert writers. In conclusion, the best moment of my life was a transformative experience that reshaped my identity and aspirations.
How I Spent My Summer Vacation Essay in English
How I Spend My Summer Vacation Essay: Sample 3. This summer vacation, I planned a trip to Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh with my family. My holiday homework assignments from math, science, and English. I decided to finish my homework early so that I could enjoy the rest of my vacation without any worries.
Poets&Quants
The average percentage of GMAT submissions among the 10 highest-ranked B-schools was 50% in 2023, down from 55% in 2022, while GRE submissions grew slightly, to 32.3% from 31.1%. Across the top 25, the picture is similar, with GMAT rate falling to 46.5% from 54.2% and GRE inching up to 30.6% from 29.6%.
The GRE Tests
In addition to almost universal acceptance for my postgraduate goals, the GRE test offered a range of flexibilities that fit into my busy schedule. I was able to choose a testing date with minimal notice. Saundrea Shropshire. Student, Georgetown University Law Center. Previous Next.