GMAT Strategy

David@VeritasPrep wrote:On my last attempt I simply skipped the AWA. I had planned to write both essays and just let it flow but there were only three other people in the test center and it was dead quite so when I started to type I just thought that I was making way too much noise since these people were really trying to get a score...

when you say "skipped", do you actually mean "skipped", or do you just mean that you wrote a couple of sentences and then moved on?

because the official gmat information bulletin says that your scores will be cancelled if you skip either of the essays.
quote:
You must at least start work on both essay questions and each multiple-choice section (Verbal and Quantitative) of the test to get an unofficial score report and an Official Score Report.
(source:
https://www.mba.com/the-gmat/gmat-scores ... 21011.ashx
page 10)

it would be interesting to know whether the information bulletin contains misinformation in addition to, well, information.

btw, david's advice in this thread is quite sound -- don't worry too much about the awa. you are much better off writing a 4-4.5 awa with essentially zero effort than writing a 6 awa with lots and lots of effort.
this is in fact the reason why the awa is scored separately from the rest of the test -- precisely because it just doesn't matter as much as the rest of the test.

David@VeritasPrep wrote:Ron -

I was wondering about that as well. Let me go back and look to see that I did in fact get a zero. But at most I wrote a couple of sentences...That must count as an attempt. I spent less than five minutes before submitting and possibly left one blank or nearly so.

I would never recommend this for a student of course...and I was happy to write an essay it just seemed so loud in that quiet room!

the wording that i quoted suggests that merely writing even a few words is sufficient -- i.e., i interpreted "you must at least start work" as meaning "you must type more than 0 characters in the box". so, if you wrote a couple of sentences, then that qualifies as "starting work".
i would imagine that this allowance exists just in case there are candidates who don't know how to type in english. i know that's somewhat farfetched, but i would imagine there are at least 1 or 2 candidates per year who have never typed on an english qwerty keyboard before...?

hmm

but, yeah, i don't really see any upside to trying this if you're an actual applicant; try explaining your 1-point AWA score to the schools that come knocking. so we should probably just kill this discussion altogether and replace it with "just write them already."

bkw wrote:

lunarpower wrote:btw, david's advice in this thread is quite sound -- don't worry too much about the awa. you are much better off writing a 4-4.5 awa with essentially zero effort than writing a 6 awa with lots and lots of effort.
this is in fact the reason why the awa is scored separately from the rest of the test -- precisely because it just doesn't matter as much as the rest of the test.

Thanks for your reply Ron.

OK, I will try to lessen my effort on AWA, and spend max 20-30min for both and see how it goes.

wait, are you saying 20-30 minutes combined?

that's a very bad idea -- if you are a non-native speaker of english and you only spend 10 to 15 min. writing the essays, then you may very well write an essay that is so incomplete that it earns a score of 1 or 2. in that case, the score definitely will work against you.
i.e., it's not important that you score at the top of the AWA scoring scale, but you do have to write essays that avoid the lowest scores.

when i say "less effort", i'm not talking about spending less time writing the essays; i'm talking about writing them in a way that is more routine, so that you don't have to use as much brainpower to write them.
i.e., you should try to develop some sort of template for writing the essay, so that, once you've picked your topic, you can just follow the template rather than having to construct the entire essay from scratch every time.

Do you suggest to do any CAT without the AWA for the sake of practice more Quant, pacing, Verbal, also to see how much difference the AWA makes?

oh dear, no.

you won't get an opportunity to "practice more quant and verbal" -- there will still be a total of 37 quant questions and 41 verbal questions, so you will still get exactly the same amount of practice and review.

and, ironically, "pacing" is exactly the reason why you should NEVER skip the awa section! if you skip the essays, then the entire overall timing of the exam will be completely different -- it will be over an hour shorter, and you will not have to deal with anywhere near the same amount of mental endurance/fatigue. in short, you won't be getting authentic practice for the exam.

write the exam every time.
get used to writing it.
the only way to make the essays more routine -- and, correspondingly, less effort -- is to practice writing them every time you take a practice test.