I'm not an admissions consultant, but here's my view on it: don't skip the AWA. You can pay less attention to it for sure, but don't just ignore it completely. There's a simple reason why you shouldn't do this: you'll be competing with people who have written their essays. It's a red flag if you don't, because you're basically getting yourself out of one hour of work, which means that your quant/verbal scores will be artificially inflated compared to those of other applicants. Adcoms are aware of this and they might discount your score or view it with suspicion as it came from someone who "didn't play by the rules."