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AWA effort affect overall score?

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AWA effort affect overall score?

by bkw » Sat May 07, 2011 12:30 pm
I have figured out that AWA affects my overall score. I use to always do my best on AWA for each CAT or a real GMAT attempt, and after the essays I use to be a bit tired. I can see that when I put too much effort in my essays my performance on the rest of the test seems to get worse. On practice tests I have been graded 6 sometimes for both essays, and on the real GMAT I got 5.0 the first time, and 5.5 the second when my overall score was lower than my first attempt.

What is your experience of too much effort in essays, and overall score?

I know that it is not possible to completely skip AWA, but I wonder if it would really matter if I get a 3 or 4 when applying to a school. If it would be possible to live with a AWA3-4, and be more focused on the rest of the test leading to +10-50 in overall score I think that would be more beneficial in my case.
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by David@VeritasPrep » Sat May 07, 2011 1:49 pm
I have had students in your position as relates to the AWA. I remember one in particular who said that he lost steam in the middle of the Quant because he had given "his all" in the AWA.

I usually tell students that they should take it a bit easy on the AWA and just let it flow. My trademarked line (not really) is that "the AWA should leave you warmed up, not worn out."

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...

Of course you cannot skip the AWA when applying to business school but I think that your 5.0 and your 5.5 from earlier should carry some weight. I would shoot for a 5.0 and just have the idea that you are going to take it a little easier and save your energy for the quant. I believe you when you say that without overworking the AWA you could go up by several 10s of points.

Has the AWA gotten to be familiar enough now that you know what you are going to do or is it still a bit of stress?
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by bkw » Sat May 07, 2011 2:14 pm
David@VeritasPrep wrote:
Has the AWA gotten to be familiar enough now that you know what you are going to do or is it still a bit of stress?
Thanks for your response David.

AWA is quite familiar topic, and I have always made my best on AWA. I do not feel stressed or so, and I have a standard layout:
intro

p 1

p 2

p 3

conclusion/summary.

To understand the questions, setup a plan with bullets of what I will cover, and then do the typing for the entire time are things that I think affects my focus, especially in making careless misses in quant, feeling non comfort with reading (the reading itself) in quite a lot in RC and focus again intensively on CR.

I have never even tried doing a CAT without a full AWA afraid of not building stamina, maybe that is something I should try?

And maybe it would be a good idea to try to shorten the effort from 60min to 20-30min for both essays. That would save me quite a bit and potentially give a 3-4...
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by lunarpower » Mon May 09, 2011 5:01 am
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.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by lunarpower » Mon May 09, 2011 5:06 am
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.
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by David@VeritasPrep » Mon May 09, 2011 1:58 pm
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!
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by lunarpower » Mon May 09, 2011 10:42 pm
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."
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by bkw » Tue May 10, 2011 9:52 am
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.

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?
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by lunarpower » Wed May 11, 2011 5:34 am
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.
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