How Does Analytical Writing Affect GMAT Score?

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Every student who aspires to take a GMAT test and pass it successfully knows the exam’s structure inside and out. One of these parts is essay writing. Since recently, the test has consisted of two writing pieces, the Analytical Writing Assessment and Integrated Reasoning. Such a decision by the Graduate Management Admission Council might make some exam takers assume that the essay has a greater impact on their GMAT score, and its significance is even bigger now. However, this is not the case.

All the GMAT booklets from any business school will say that every section of the test matters equally for the score, and failing any of it will be the end of your application. This is a touching pep-talk that does not correspond to actual life. Even some professors from these business schools admit that the results you will receive for analytical writing have little weight, if any at all. But one should not assume that this part of the test can be skipped or paid zero attention to. At this point, we have to understand what value the Analytical Writing carries for the school admission panel.

Things to Consider in Analytical GMAT Writing

When we talk about Integrated Reasoning, the point of it is to show that you can reason, obviously, and validate your opinion on the matter. As for the Analytical Writing Assessment, to be successful, you have to present arguments while avoiding expressing personal points of view. Although you are not supposed to express your opinions, the practice shows that it is better to counter in the essay rather than simply analyze the problem as it is.

The main thing here is to demonstrate your abilities as a logical and analytical thinker. You will need to find at least three logical errors, describe them using relevant arguments, and give some recommendations on solving the problems. Taking such an approach will give you more chances to get a high score for this part of the test.

You will have only 30 minutes, but you will see it is more than enough for that section. Do not try to go into deep reasoning; better leave it for the second essay. Here are some things that you should pay attention to while analyzing the given statement that the author has used for reasoning:

Irrelevant and unsupported points
Mistakes that are associated with generalization
Invalid cause-effect relations
Using misconceptions

You should place each point that you want to talk about in a separate paragraph. This way, your essay will have a standard structure, which significantly affects its final score.

Do Not Skip the Analytical Writing Section

It will be honest to say that the score for analytical writing is not very useful. And taking too much time to get ready for this part of the exam is not worth the effort. Even some admissions panel members may say that the Analytical Writing score does not matter to them when it comes to considering students’ applications.

Today, the essay is evaluated by a computer. It distinguishes the pattern and particular keywords. Some students might think that skipping the essay or writing only a couple of sentences would be reasonable, as the essay itself has no significance. And this is a completely wrong assumption.

First of all, some schools do require the Analytical Writing score to be more than just a zero. The other aspect that should motivate you is creating a favorable student image. If you skip the essay or write it just for the sake of it, the admissions council might be discouraged by your attitude. Another thing is that the analytical writing part can be somewhat of a warmup before the rest of the exam. It can help you dive into the testing atmosphere and get your mind going.

GMAT Analytical Writing Assessment: How to Get Prepared

As you already know, you will have to write two essays for the GMAT test. You will get marks out of 6 depending on the quality of the writing. The score for the essay does not affect the out of 800 score for the exam. And consequently, it is not worth it to spend a lot of time preparing for the writing sections of the test. It is better to focus on the Verbal and Quantitative sections, as they comprise your admission score. But you should take some time to get prepared and practice a little so as not to get confused when you receive your topic.

As soon as the topics are published, you can start researching them and getting ready for the writing. If this is your first attempt at taking your GMAT exam, you will need a little bit of help with it. And it is better to find a professional one. To get instant help with GMAT essay writing, let WriteMyPaperHub write your essay from scratch.