The Analytical Writing measure assesses critical thinking and analytical writing capabilities. It evaluates your ability to communicate and support complicated ideas, design and test arguments, and engage in a clear and intelligible discussion of an issue. It doesn’t assess how much you know about a specific topic.
While an above average score on the Analytical Writing measure is unlikely to really help you with an admissions committee, a below average score can be a big problem. Why? Because a below average score on the Analytical writing measure suggests to a graduate program’s admissions committee that the applicant will have trouble either developing or communicating complex arguments and ideas in writing (one of the core activities you must perform in any graduate program).
In this article, we’ll first provide an overview of the GRE analytical writing measure, then explain how its scored. Finally, we’ll argue that unless you are scoring below average, you should focus the time and energy of your GRE prep, whether you are working with a GRE tutor or not, on the GRE quantitative reasoning or GRE verbal reasoning sections.
The Analytical Writing measure consists of two specific analytical writing tasks:
The Issue task presents an opinion on some issue (it could be economic, political, historical, etc.) You are then asked to respond to it. You must evaluate the issue, consider its nuances, and develop an argument, supported by clear rationale and examples, to support your perspective.
The Argument task requires you to evaluate an argument according to specific instructions. You are asked to evaluate the logic of the argument rather than agree or disagree with the position it presents.
The two tasks complement one another in that one requires you to construct your own argument by assuming a position and offering reasons in support of your perspective. The other task asks you to evaluate someone else's argument by evaluating its logic and supporting evidence.
There are a variety of free and low cost ways to prepare for the GRE analytical writing measure. ETS itself publishes free issue topics and argument topics. ETS also offers guidance on effective Analytical writing measure test taking preparation, such as understanding the different task types and objectives in advance, reviewing sampling topics, understanding what is being measured and how responses are scored, and budgeting your time.
However, there are also some low cost materials available on Amazon that go into more detail about what the ETS scoring system is looking for and which provide more structured practice.
Although the GRE® Analytical Writing measure consists of two separate tasks, ETS reports a single score. It considers one score more reliable than a score for either task by itself. The test assesses "analytical writing," which essentially means the combination of critical thinking skills (ability to reason, compile evidence in support of a position and communicate multi-faceted ideas), control of grammar, and the “mechanics” of writing (i.e., spelling or flow).
Scores are reported in half-point increments between 0 and 6. As mentioned earlier in this article, a score of 5.5 or 6.0 on the Analytical Writing measure is very good, but it’s unlikely to really “help” your application a whole lot.
However, a score of 3.0 or lower begins to be problematic, because as we’ll see below, it suggests at least one major flaw in your ability to construct and communicate analytical arguments. That flaw could involve your ability to develop an argument, organize ideas, or structure sentences and make effective use of language. But in any case, it indicates that your responses were vague or unclear. And this is a red flag for admissions committees trying to determine if you can succeed in a rigorous graduate school environment.
Below are the scores you might receive:
The GRE has three sections: 1) Quantitative reasoning, 2) Verbal reasoning and 3) Analytical Writing. However, this does not mean that your study plan should allocate 33% of your time to quantitative reasoning, 33% to verbal reasoning, and 33% to Analytical Writing. The impact of increasingly higher quant and verbal reasoning scores are far more “linear” than they are for Analytical Writing.
As your quant or verbal score increases and your overall percentile scores increase from 70% to 75% to 80% to 85%, your admissions chances increase accordingly. Schools will differentiate between a 70th percentile GRE quant score and a 90th percentile GRE quant score. One is just demonstrably better and indicates a higher level of quantitative reasoning skill.
But how is an admissions committee supposed to interpret a score of 5.5 or 5.0 vs. a score of 4.5 or 4.0 on the Analytical Writing measure? Yes, 5.5 is clearly better than 4.0. But a 4.0 clearly indicates you can communicate ideas in writing. There are two entire other sections of the test that measure your logic, critical thinking, and verbal reasoning skills. A 5.5 vs. a 4.0 score just doesn’t score you that many “points” with the admission committee.
This is the sense in which the Analytical Writing scores vs. admissions chances are far less “linear” than they are for the other sections. On GRE quant and GRE verbal, higher is better. On GRE Analytical Writing, of course a higher score is better. But really, it’s more of a “are you above the threshold or not?” with the “threshold” being a score of 3.5. If you are at 3.5+, you are probably OK. But if you are below 3.0, you may have just raised a red flag with the admissions committee.
The best way to think about the GRE Analytical Writing measure, in our perspective, is to put scores into three buckets:
In other words, early on in your GRE prep plan, you should take and score a practice Analytical writing measure essay. If you, right off the bat, are scoring >3.5, you can really deemphasize this relative to other sections of the GRE as you design your GRE study plan. On the other hand, if you are scoring at 3.0 or below, you need to build ample time to work on GRE essays into your GRE prep.