That and it's more about the "analytical" than the "writing" at this point. ![]() Not knowledge about the test but personal or experiential knowledge. My theory on the difference between 5 and 6 is knowledge. I think the difference between 5 and 6 is mostly luck, or if you can figure out what silly rule of thumb ETS thinks can be used to define great writing and catering to it. To me, the notion that some ETS employee can judge an exceptional essay in a few minutes is offensive. I'm sure a professor would be more interested in seeing your actual writing than the second hand opinion of a pair of college grads.ĥ to 6 is some mysterious "talent" and "outstanding, excellent, exceptional" essay factor. If they don't, you could offer to submit one anyway. This isn't great news if your field does care about writing, since now it's not clear what you have to do to get a perfect score - but the good news is if your field is writing-focused, they'll probably ask for a writing sample anyway and disregard the GRE writing score in its favor. 5 to 6 is some mysterious "talent" and "outstanding, excellent, exceptional" essay factor. 4 to 5 is "thinking" - ie can you apply logic to see where someone is wrong ("a cat bit me when I was a kid, cats are aggressive animals") and to prove you are right. I think my essay went over the scorer's head.Īs I understand it (there's a point by point breakdown somewhere), you can get to 4.0 by just making sure the grammar is correct, the words are not misused, there's no misspellings, the sentences and paragraphs are coherent and relate to each other. They also happened to ask me about stuff I was used to debating. Honestly, I think especially the second time my answers were very good, because I happened to feel inspired to write very thorough, clear, logical critiques on the topics given. Luckily my field doesn't care about writing. I got a 5.0 twice, in both cases I followed standard standardized test essay advice (don't make spelling or grammar mistakes, don't misuse words, have an introduction and conclusion, make sure it makes sense, make sure it's about the prompt, throw in a few big words). Tl dr: Follow the methods from prep companies. I got a 5.5 writing what I thought were rather crap essays, but I had followed "The Kaplan Method. For both essays I used the template structure suggested by Kaplan. If you can say something simply, say it simply!). I used uncessesarily large vocabularly words and highly complex sentence structure (which I frown upon as a scientist. I wrote for the ENTIRE time, even if I felt like I'd already made the best points (a longer essay is almost always scored higher than a shorter one). The second time around, I followed Kaplan's advice. That's a fine score, but below where I should have been. I got a 4.5 on the writing section the first time I tackled the GRE. I write very well, but I write best in non-traditional formats (eg, I loathe the 5 paragraph essay!). In my undergrad classes (including courses far from my specialities), professors frequently complimented me on my writing. The issue is that a "good" essay may or may not receive a good score for the GRE. ![]() It helped me focus my writing into a style that clearly benefitted me on the GRE. I was a big fan of the essay writing advice in Kaplan's main GRE book.
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