AWA do I need it?

Don't skip it! These scores are good on your record for years. What if you decide to apply to a different school? Just do the best you can on it and see what kind of score you get.

I was at a MIT meet recently and their admissions rep was asked whether it's ok to polish up the admission essays a little bit. She did say that the essays should not be too bad (so some polishing is ok) but she really pointed out that the schools were looking for the individual applicant's voice and sometimes the polishing takes that away.

Another thing that she did say is that they can sometimes make out that an essay has been polished by looking at the essay on the person's GMAT - if there's a huge difference in quality/style, then they might think that it has been thru a professional polish job.

So, I would say that while you might not want to spend too much time sweating the essay, do try to do a decent job.

Of course, this is one incident from one college rep's. I've been to other meets where they've said that they ignore the AWA and also that they ignore individual section scores and only concentrate on the full score (Stern, I think). So, it's very much on a school-by-school basis. Why not send an email to those schools that you're thinking of applying and see what they say?

Even if the school does not count the AWA score, take that time to prepare your mind for the next 2.5 hours of hell. Think of the AWA essays as a warm up for the verbal section (especially CR).