The analytical writing section tests your critical
thinking and analytical writing skills. It assesses your
ability to articulate and support complex ideas,
analyze an argument, and sustain a focused and
coherent discussion. It does not assess specific content
knowledge.
The analytical writing section consists of two
separately-timed analytical writing tasks:
• a 45-minute “Present Your Perspective on an
Issue” task
• a 30-minute “Analyze an Argument” task
You will be given a choice between two Issue topics.
Each states an opinion on an issue of broad interest
and asks you to discuss the issue from any
perspective(s) you wish, as long as you provide
relevant reasons and examples to explain and support
your views.
You will not have a choice of Argument topics.
The Argument task presents a different challenge
from that of the Issue task: it requires you to critique
a given argument by discussing how well reasoned
you find it. You will need to consider the logical
soundness of the argument rather than to agree or
disagree with the position it presents.
The two tasks are complementary in that one
requires you to construct your own argument by
taking a position and providing evidence supporting
your views on the issue, whereas the other requires
you to critique someone else’s argument by assessing
its claims and evaluating the evidence it provides.
How the Analytical Writing Section is Scored
Each response is holistically scored on a 6-point scale
according to the criteria published in the GRE
analytical writing scoring guides (see Appendix A on
pages 51–53). Holistic scoring means that each
response is judged as a whole: readers do not separate
the response into component parts and award a
certain number of points for a particular criterion or
element such as ideas, organization, sentence structure,
or language. Instead, readers assign scores based
on the overall quality of the response, considering all
of its characteristics in an integrated way. Excellent
organization or poor organization, for example, will
be part of the readers’ overall impression of the
response and will therefore contribute to the score,
but organization, as a distinct feature, has no specific
weight.
In general, GRE readers are college and university
faculty experienced in teaching courses in which
writing and critical thinking skills are important. All
GRE readers have undergone careful training, passed
stringent GRE qualifying tests, and demonstrated
that they are able to maintain scoring accuracy.
To ensure fairness and objectivity in scoring
• responses are randomly distributed to the readers
• all identifying information about the test takers
is concealed from the readers
• each response is scored by two readers
• readers do not know what other scores a response
may have received
• the scoring procedure requires that each response
receive identical or adjacent scores from
two readers; any other score combination is
adjudicated by a third GRE reader
The scores given for the two tasks are then averaged
for a final reported score. The score level descriptions,
presented in Appendix A on page 53, provide
information on how to interpret the total score on
the analytical writing section. The primary emphasis
in scoring the analytical writing section is on critical
thinking and analytical writing skills.
Your essay responses on the analytical writing
section will be reviewed by ETS essay-imilaritydetection
software and by experienced essay readers
during the scoring process. Based on widely accepted
criteria of plagiarism within United States graduate
schools and universities, ETS reserves the right to
cancel test scores of any test taker when there is
substantial evidence that an essay response includes,
but is not limited to, any of the following:
• text that is substantially similar to that found on
one or more other GRE essay responses;
• quoting or paraphrasing, without attribution,
language, or ideas that appear in published or
unpublished sources;
• unacknowledged use of work that has been
produced through collaboration with others
without citation of the contribution of others;
• essays that are submitted as work of the examinee
when the ideas or words have, in fact,
been borrowed from elsewhere or prepared by
another person.