The GMAT AWA is a separate score than the rest of your scores. On the GMAT, you'll get a Q score out of 51 (and a percentile), a V score out of 51 (and a percentile) and those scores will combine to create your scaled score out of 800 (and a percentile). Your AWA score is separate and will have no effect on your score out of 800.

The AWA is graded by a human and an e-grader that will grade for spelling/grammar, transitional terms, etc. Both will score your essay out of 6.0 and the two scores are averaged. The highest score you can get on the AWA is a 6.0 which I believe is the 94th percentile. You get the AWA scores when you get your official score report, and you get your Q, V, and scaled scores on your unofficial score report.

Hope that helps!

The highest score you can get on the AWA is a 6.0 which I believe is the 94th percentile.

Actually, as of April 09 it was the 87th percentile.

To put this into some perspective, a score of 5 is the 55th percentile, so most people do quite well.

I would do a few practise essays but not worry about this section this much. From what I have read from the forums, people have submitted essays of differing styles and formats and have done well.

Hmm, weird, my score report says 94th (May 09). Must be a misprint or something, I can't imagine there was that much of spike in people doing poorly.

Anyway, no need to worry about percentiles in AWA, really, b-schools would generally just like you to be above 4.0.