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7 Tips for a Perfect GRE Issue Essay

By posted February 10, 2012

If you get a perfect score on the GRE’s Issue Essay (a 6), it can really boost your graduate school admissions chances! The best schools want good Verbal and Quantitative scores, but also students who are clear, competent writers. Lots of students have excellent transcripts and are good at taking tests – but not everyone can demonstrate impressive writing skills! Here are 7 tips to take your Issue essay to that perfect 6!

1. Write at least three practice essays. Practice makes perfect! You can study for the GRE online by looking up the AWA prompts and practicing writing several of them within the 30 minute guideline. The only way to get comfortable with the time constraints is to practice them, so set up test-like conditions and get to work. You can see the Issue essay prompts here.

2. Don’t waffle. Choose one side of the issue only, and don’t try to “have it both ways.” Even if you don’t believe in the side you choose, you’ll only have time to argue one side effectively. If you take a middle-of-the-road approach you won’t sound as confident or clear. Remember, according to ETS, the “readers are evaluating the skill with which you address the specific instructions and articulate and develop an argument to support your evaluation of the issue.” What exactly you say (what side you choose to defend) is less important than how you defend it!

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How to Structure the GRE Issue Essay

By posted February 3, 2012

The GRE Issue essay is similar to any 5-paragraph short essay you’ve written in college. You may opt for 4-6 paragraphs, but this structure plans for 5. The official GRE website states that readers of the Issue essay “are evaluating the skill with which you…articulate and develop an argument to support your evaluation of the issue.” The better organized your essay, the clearer it will become to the reader. Here’s how to structure each paragraph:

Paragraph 1 – The Intro

How do you begin your essay? One of the following rhetorical devices is the most common: a generalization about the topic, a quotation, a short anecdote to set-up your position, a historical framework, a piece of news illustrating the relevance of the issue.  Regardless of how you “get in” to the topic, you’ll score points if you can admit the complexity of the issue, and show how it applies to contemporary life. Show the reader what about the topic will be your focus.

Most students open with a general blanket statement about the issue, but feel free to be creative! You can find sample prompts from the Issue Essay topic pool to practice.

KEY TIP: Always place your thesis as the final sentence in your introduction.

Paragraph 2  – First Body Paragraph

Use your strongest, most specific example first. Your example can be from history, science, politics, business, entertainment, pop culture, current events, personal experience, etc. Anything can be an example, but choose ONE only for each paragraph. It needs to be something you are knowledgeable about and also something that you believe strongly supports your thesis. You have three tasks in your body paragraphs:

-Bring up your example.

-Explain how it relates to the topic.

-Show that it fully supports your thesis.

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How the AWA is Scored on the GRE

By posted February 1, 2012

The AWA section of the GRE is made up of two essays – the Argument essay, and the Issue essay. Each essay will be given two independent scores, but the scores are averaged into one score from 0 to 6. According to ETS, this is done because “it is more reliable than a score for either task alone.” The final score will be in half-point increments. For example, if you receive a 5 on the Argument essay, and a 6 on the Issue essay, your score will be a 5.5.

The readers of AWA are extremely familiar with the “look” of the graded GRE essays for each of the possible prompts, so they “know” ahead of time what a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 essay should “look like.” You will receive “NS” or no score, if you do not type any text. You will receive 0 if you write in a foreign language, or completely off-task.

According to the official ETS rubric, the highest scoring essays (those given a 5.5 or a 6) demonstrate: “insightful, in-depth analysis… logically compelling reasons and/or highly persuasive examples…is well organized; skillfully uses sentence variety and precise vocabulary to convey meaning effectively; demonstrates superior facility with sentence structure and language usage, but may have minor errors that do not interfere with meaning.” This means that they are not looking for perfection – obviously within 30 minutes you may have some spelling and grammar errors (and that’s okay!).

Grockit is convenient. Find out how you can study online any time of the day, from anywhere you have internet access.

The main qualities that the readers look for are the organization of your ideas, the quality of the ideas themselves, the strength and relevance of the examples, and your grasp of standard written English. Readers are trained to take non-native speakers’ abilities into account when grading so that scores are fair.

Below is the official AWA Scoring Percentile ranking from ETS. You can see that a score of 5 places you in the 87st percentile. It’s quite plausible to achieve such a high score!

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The GRE Analytical Writing Measure: What to Expect

By posted January 19, 2012

The analytical writing measure consists of two writing tasks which are timed separately.  You will write these two essays first when taking the GRE, before any quantitative or verbal sections.  The two tasks are:

-Analyze an Issue

-Analyze an Argument

Timing: You will be given 30 minutes to complete each essay, which includes any time spent brainstorming, outlining, or revising.  With such a limited amount of time to compose your best possible work, background knowledge of the tasks and practice writing the essays are crucial.

Format: For the issue task, you will be given a statement (a sentence or short paragraph), followed by a prompt that asks you to explain whether you agree or disagree with the statement and the reasoning behind that perspective.  There are six different sets of instructions that might appear after the issue.  Pay attention to the wording of these instructions.

Try this GRE text completion question for more GRE practice!

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GRE Issue Writing Task: Use What You Know

By posted October 21, 2010

Admittedly, the toughest part of the Issue Task is coming up with ideas that you’re confident in. You might think that, with the 200+ topics available, you’ll have to read an encyclopedia, scour the newspaper, dust off an old history book, and exhume those half-read classics from high school English. I’m sure none of you wants to do that (though I bet it’s been done before), and, more importantly, the ETS doesn’t expect this from you. Though it seems certain issue prompts necessitate a thorough knowledge in some particular area, such is not the case. Students from all kinds of backgrounds take the GRE; a chemistry student isn’t expected to know Shakespeare, and an English student isn’t expected to understand hydrogen bonding. Still, if you come across a prompt that could benefit from your expertise, by all means go for it.

Let’s look at a relatively esoteric issue prompt and explore varying avenues of analysis, some appropriate for the expert and others for the layman:

“The arts (painting, music, literature, etc.) reveal the otherwise hidden ideas and impulses of a society.”

What we have here is a veritable breath of fresh air for any humanities or arts major, but it’s a kiss of death for anybody without a predilection for the arts. In fact, I want to offer an often unheeded caveat for those art lovers: don’t get too excited. If you come across a topic that allows you to exploit your studies, don’t reproduce your senior thesis in 45 minutes. In other words, keep in mind that your readers may not be conversant with your academic discipline, so try to temper your genius, as hard as that may be.

Find out how you can get customized feedback on your essays, whether they are for the exam or admissions,  to hone your skills with a Grockit tutor.

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GRE Issue Writing Task: Part 1

By posted June 23, 2010

45 minutes of your entire exam will be devoted to the Issue Writing task, so even though it may not be the most famous section of the test, do not take it lightly. Do not assume that, because this is simply a timed essay, you do not have to study for it. Though practicing writing may be an even bigger pain than practicing multiple choice questions, you still have to do it to increase your chances of a high score.

Your job in Issue Writing is to present your perspective on an issue. The Issue will consist of two elements: a statement of your task and a 1-2 sentence topic which is a statement of opinion on an issue. Your statement of task will always be the same: “present your perspective on the following issue; use relevant reasons and/or examples to support your viewpoint.” The topic might look like this: “The objective of science is largely opposed to that of art: while science seeks to discover truths, art seeks to obscure them.”

Before you see your topic,  the testing system will present you with more directions specific to the task;

1. Writing on any topic other than the one presented is unacceptable.

2.The topic will appear as a brief statement on an issue of general interest.

3. You are free to accept, reject, or qualify the statement.

4.You should support your perspective with reasons and/or examples from such

sources as your experience, observation, reading, and academic studies.

5. You should take a few minutes to plan your response before you begin typing.

6. You should leave time to reread your response and make any revisions you think

are needed.

Contact one of Grockit’s expert GRE tutors and find out how you can get personalized feedback on your practice essays.

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