Feeling stuck on the GRE Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA)? Wondering how to improve your GRE essay score? Whether you’re aiming for a perfect 6 or just trying to move from a 3.5 to a 4.5, using the right GRE writing tips can make all the difference in the quality of your GRE issue essay. In this guide, you’ll learn actionable strategies to sharpen your writing and boost your AWA score, with a little help from AI.
Let’s explore how to implement each of these steps and how AI can become your personal GRE writing tutor.
Here are the topics we’ll cover:
- Tip #1: Establish Your GRE AWA Baseline Score
- Tip #2: Practice With Real GRE Essay Prompts
- Tip #3: Get Feedback on Your Practice Essays to Improve Faster
- Tip #4: Identify and Tackle GRE Writing Weaknesses
- Prompt to Identify Writing Weaknesses
- Tip #5: Push Through Writing Plateaus on the GRE
- Key Takeaways
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- How is the GRE AWA writing section scored?
- How do you prepare yourself for the GRE Analytical Writing section?
- How can I improve my GRE essay score fast?
- What’s a good GRE AWA score for top grad schools?
- What exactly is TTP AI Assist?
- How does an LLM work?
- Can’t I just use ChatGPT to practice GRE writing?
- Isn’t using AI unethical?
- What’s Next?
Tip #1: Establish Your GRE AWA Baseline Score
The first and most important GRE writing tip is to know how you are currently scoring. So, why is it important to know your baseline score? It helps determine what you need to do to score well in the long run.
The strategies and the GRE essay writing tips you follow will differ based on how you’re currently scoring. For example, if you’re scoring a 3 and would like to score a 5, you’ll need to work on a very different skill set than someone looking to go from a 5 to a 6.
While this might sound like an obvious tip, over the years, I’ve had many students spend hours upon hours reading up on AWA strategy without ever figuring out where they are on the 1–6 scoring scale.
Even if you think this is great advice, you might be wondering how to determine your score in the first place. Sure, you can pay an experienced tutor — you can even have ETS grade your essays. In fact, ETS offers a service called ScoreItNow that does just that. It costs $20 to receive a grade and feedback on 2 essays. Not a bad price, actually.
However, there’s an even better way to establish your baseline score, one that is virtually instantaneous and scales really well. I’m talking about TTP AI Assist. This is not your run-of-the-mill AI (sorry ChatGPT). Instead, TTP AI Assist is trained on TTP’s knowledge base so that it draws from all the material created by TTP GRE experts. One way to take advantage of that expertise is by asking TTP AI Assist for a baseline score on your essay.
KEY FACT:
TTP AI Assist draws from material created by TTP GRE experts.
Prompt for Baseline Score
“Can you grade and evaluate the following AWA essay? [Insert entire essay]”
KEY FACT:
Knowing your baseline score on the AWA is important to defining your study strategy.
Tip #2: Practice With Real GRE Essay Prompts
One of the more important GRE essay tips is to practice with real GRE essay prompts. ETS has released all of the possible GRE essay prompts that you can encounter on test day. Pretty neat, right? The key here isn’t to try to answer every single essay prompt (there are over 100). Instead, exposing yourself to a variety of AWA essay topics will force you to come up with more relevant supporting examples, preparing you to tie these examples back to your thesis.
Before diving into the pool of GRE essay prompts, you might want to get a thorough overview of the AWA section. Additionally, exposing yourself to more essay prompts will make you better prepared for test day. Given the sheer number of topics, it’s likely you’ll encounter one you haven’t seen before. Practicing with a wide variety of essay prompts will prepare you to handle those that are not in your wheelhouse.
TTP PRO TIP:
Practice with a variety of GRE essay prompts so you’ll be ready for any topic that comes your way on test day.
Tip #3: Get Feedback on Your Practice Essays to Improve Faster
Now that you’ve used TTP Assist to give you a baseline score, you’re likely intent on boosting that score as soon as possible. But how do you do so quickly and effectively?
With feedback.
That said, getting feedback on your essay isn’t nearly as easy as flipping to the back of the book and looking at an explanation. As mentioned above, the best option so far has been ETS’s ScoreItNow. And of course, there’s always a tutor. For both of these options, costs scale quickly.
Within seconds, TTP AI Assist can give you feedback on any aspect of your essay, from the most pinpoint detail (“How’s my punctuation?”) to the most holistic analysis (“How are my supporting examples?”). And it scales wonderfully. You can ask unlimited follow-up questions without having to pay a single cent more.
KEY FACT:
TTP AI Assist allows unlimited follow-up questions.
Below are some example AI prompts you can try.
Prompt for Full Essay Feedback
“Here’s an essay I wrote for the GRE AWA section. Please provide a score and feedback so that I can improve [Insert essay].”
Prompt for Section-by-Section Review
“Please evaluate my [intro, body, etc.] and provide a GRE AWA score. I realize this is only the [intro, body, etc.] and an exact score can’t be provided, but please approximate what score I’d likely get based on this section. Next, tell me what I need to do to elevate this sample to a [input score].”
Prompt for Revisions
“Here is my reworked section based on your feedback. Can you please rescore this and then tell me what I need to do to achieve a [input score] [insert essay]?”
Continue this revision cycle until you can get as close to your goal score as possible.
Prompt for Strategies and Examples
“I’m struggling to go from a 4 to a 5 on the GRE AWA section. Can you please suggest some creative prompts I could ask to help me achieve this goal?”
The above are just a few prompts you can use to improve your GRE essay and score. There’s so much you can do with AI Assist, so play around with it! If you’re unsure if AI Assist can do what you’re asking, simply ask it: “Would you be able to [input whatever you are wondering it can do]?”
TTP PRO TIP:
Input your AWA essay into TTP AI Assist to get direct, actionable feedback.
Tip #4: Identify and Tackle GRE Writing Weaknesses
It’s easy to want to focus on what you’re already good at. However, your weak areas are where you stand to gain the most. By weak areas, I mean those where you’ll get the biggest increase in your GRE writing score with the least effort.
For example, you might wonder whether using sophisticated GRE words in your essay will bring your score from a 3 to a 4. The answer is no. In fact, doing so might even hurt your score because you’re focusing on the wrong thing.
While “hard” GRE words deployed in an already well-written essay can boost a 5 to a 6, those words will look out of place in a 3 or 4 essay and potentially come off as bombastic.
Instead, focus on the factors that’ll take you from a 3 to a 4. What are those factors? Maybe your essay lacks a thesis statement, or maybe you’re not providing strong support for your thesis. Perhaps you’re lacking organization, or your grammar and punctuation are a mess.
But how do you identify your particular writing weaknesses? Once again, you can ask TTP AI Assist. If you’ve followed the above examples, it already has access to your essay as well as the ETS material you feed it.
Copy and paste any of your essays into TTP Assist and ask it to identify your weak spots. Again, by weak spots, I mean those things that are the most likely to translate to a score increase. Let’s have TTP AI Assist identify the weak spots in my writing. For this example, I input a purposefully flawed essay.
Prompt to Identify Writing Weaknesses
“Can you please point out the weak spots in this AWA essay I wrote? I want you to identify those things that I can change that will lead to the fastest score improvement.”
At this point, you can ask TTP AI Assist to elaborate on any of its recommendations. You can even ask it to list specific parts of your essay and tell you how it would have written the sentence or expressed an idea differently. You can also input your attempts at improving what it pointed out to see whether your weak spots are becoming stronger.
TTP PRO TIP:
Use TTP AI Assist to get feedback on precise weaknesses you can address to improve your AWA essay.
Tip #5: Push Through Writing Plateaus on the GRE
Even leveraging the powerful tool that is the TTP AI Assist and/or working with a high-quality GRE tutor will not boost your essay score from a 3 to a 5 overnight — or even over the course of a month. To improve, you’ll need to really push yourself, refining how you write.
Even with such diligence, you are not likely to see progress right away. Writing improvement happens in short bursts with plateaus in between. I’ve seen many students plateau on the AWA, thinking that they won’t be able to improve anymore. But when you do see an improvement, it’s usually a sudden jump. And that jump will manifest in your score increase. You’ll see this increase in .5 increments, something that you’ll see in the TTP AI Assist’s scoring of your essay samples.
Once you’ve made significant progress, submit an essay to ScoreItNow. Because the scorers are employed by ETS, the creators of the test, the score will most accurately reflect what you’ll get on test day. A little certainty never hurts!
One final note: improving your AWA score will take some work. So don’t become disheartened if you don’t see immediate progress. Improving writing, after all, is something that takes time. But by following the tips and tricks above and leaning into TTP AI Assist, you’ll get past these inevitable plateaus faster.
Writing improvement happens in short bursts with plateaus in between.
Key Takeaways
In this article, we’ve discussed 5 key GRE Analytical Writing tips:
- Establish your baseline AWA score to determine how much improvement you need.
- Ask TTP AI to evaluate your AWA practice essays.
- Use feedback from TTP AI Assist to address your weak areas.
- Practice with a wide variety of AWA essay prompts.
- Push through score plateaus by continuing to refine your writing.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How is the GRE AWA writing section scored?
If you are curious how the GRE analytical writing section is scored in relation to the rest of the test, learn how the AWA is scored and whether the GRE AWA section is important in GRE scoring.
How do you prepare yourself for the GRE Analytical Writing section?
In addition to practicing the 5 tips discussed in this article, read the Guide to GRE Writing Prompts to ensure you’re well prepared for test day.
How can I improve my GRE essay score fast?
Knowing your weak spots, working at them, and getting constant feedback is the magic formula. Of course, securing a tutor for quality feedback can be difficult. Using TTP AI Assist can fill the feedback gap and turn the process into a well-oiled machine.
What’s a good GRE AWA score for top grad schools?
A “good” score can vary a bit depending on which program you want to attend at a given grad school. Typically, for humanities programs — which prize writing — a 5 is a good score, and a 5.5 is a competitive one. For math programs, in which writing typically isn’t given as much weight, a 4.5 is considered good, a 5.0 competitive.
What exactly is TTP AI Assist?
TTP’s AI Assist is a Large Language Model, commonly referred to by its abbreviation: LLM. While all computers ultimately run on binary code (0s and 1s), LLMs are built on something called a neural net. This allows them to better handle the inherent “squishiness” of language — the ambiguity that rigid, rule-based systems aren’t well suited for. LLMs are able to do this by predicting the next most-likely word in a sentence based on the surrounding context that word appears in.
How does an LLM work?
LLMs’ ability to uncannily predict the next most-likely word in a sentence helps them create reams of text and even mimic different writing styles. And the more technical and formulaic the writing, the better an LLM tends to perform (though they can be surprisingly adept at creative writing, too). In terms of the range of writing formats — from comic book dialogue to instructional manual — the AWA falls much closer to the instructional manual. That’s good news for GRE aspirants looking to leverage AI on the AWA section.
Finally, LLMs are fantastic at providing feedback on your writing and ways to improve. In fact, they are frequently better as editors than as writers — again, good news.
Can’t I just use ChatGPT to practice GRE writing?
So why not just use your favorite LLM, such as ChatGPT, to help you on AWA? The short answer: not all LLMs are good GRE tutors. The longer version: LLMs draw from a specific body of knowledge, and most LLMs draw from a vast swathe of the Internet. Their answers to your questions are often a generalization of patterns found on online content — meaning quality can vary widely. Worse, LLMs can often hallucinate or make things up because the body of knowledge they are trained on is so vast and can sometimes be unreliable.
TTP’s AI Assist, on the other hand, is trained (meaning it has “learned from”) Target Test Prep’s existing body of knowledge. In other words, it draws its knowledge from the TTP playbook, not from a broad chunk of the Internet. And because the TTP playbook has been meticulously crafted by top GRE experts, you know you can trust it. The same cannot be said for the internet. So when using AI to prep for the GRE, you don’t want the average; you want the best of TTP’s proven tips and strategies.
Isn’t using AI unethical?
Let’s be clear: I’m not asking you to use an LLM to write your GRE essay on test day. Besides being highly unethical, this approach would be very impractical (they definitely don’t allow AI in the testing room!) Instead, you’re using TTP AI Assist during your study phase to help you become a better writer at the AWA. After all, it’s in this complex, multi-pronged process of helping you improve your logic, clarity, grammar, and style that TTP AI Assist really shines.
Let’s be clear: I’m not asking you to use an LLM to write your GRE essay on test day. Instead, use it during your study phase to help you become a better writer.
What’s Next?
Ready to improve your GRE essay score? Start applying these writing tips and tricks with a free TTP GRE trial and get instant, personalized AWA feedback anytime you want.
Looking to choose a GRE study plan? Read this article to learn how to choose the best GRE prep program for you.
Curious about what a good GRE score is? Read this article to learn how to set a GRE goal score.
Want more ideas about how to use TTP AI Assist to study for the GRE? Check out this TTP AI Assist for GRE playlist on YouTube!
