While all GRE® General Test score reports contain an Analytical Writing score, score users who have access to the ETS® Data Manager can also view test takers' actual essay responses.
Writing is critical to success in graduate and professional education and beyond. The GRE Analytical Writing measure provides departments and programs information on critical thinking and analytical writing abilities as well as authentic samples of an applicant's writing.
A GRE General Test Analytical Writing essay response should be considered a rough first draft since test takers do not have sufficient time to revise their essays during the test. To ensure fairness with test takers who must handwrite their essay responses at paper-delivered test administrations, individuals taking the computer-delivered test do not have spell-checking or grammar-checking software available to them.
Essay responses at paper-delivered administrations are handwritten; essay responses at computer-delivered administrations are typed. Typed essays often appear shorter than handwritten essays; handwritten essays can appear to be more heavily revised than typed essays. GRE readers are trained to evaluate the content of essays and to give the same score to a handwritten essay as they would to its typed version of the same quality.
See also:
- Analytical Writing Score Level Descriptions
- "Issue" Task Scoring Guide
- "Argument" Task Scoring Guide
- If You're Not Using GRE® Analytical Writing Scores, You Might Be Missing Out