Lisa Anderson wrote:Dear Martin:

The AWA does not impact your GMAT score, but schools do look at it. If your AWA is below a 5.0, it gives pause and will be reviewed. Some schools do use the AWA score in the evaluation and others just look at your score as a check on your writing ability. Likewise, many schools read your essays to verify writing style for a match against your application essays.

The bottom line on the AWA: take it seriously as it will be considered, but don't spend too much time on it as it does not impact your score.

Regards,
Lisa

For the most part I agree - the AWA is something more likely to hurt rather than help your application.

You should check with the schools to which you're applying and see if they have a minimum AWA requirement. For most schools, as long as your score is above its cut off, the AWA will have very little impact. However, if your AWA score is below the cut off, that will raise a red flag on your application.

So, you need to practice the AWA enough to be comfortable with the structure and timing and to ensure that you'll hit that minimum score. Both AWA questions are very formulaic and you can create a template (or learn a template from a company like Kaplan) for each question type, then plug the specifics into that template.

Score aside, there's another excellent reason to write the AWA every time you write a CAT: you want your practice CATs to simulate your real GMAT test day as much as possible and if you don't do an hour of essays before starting quant, then you're not building the staimina you'll need to succeed on the actual GMAT. Mentally, there's a huge difference between doing a reading comp passage after sitting in front of the computer for 1h30minutes and 2h30minutes.