dahcrap wrote:
I ran a portion of my stanford Essay 1 on this tool and I got this result.
Number of characters (without spaces) : 1,073.00
Number of words : 197.00
Number of sentences : 9.00
Average number of characters per word : 5.45
Average number of syllables per word : 1.91
Average number of words per sentence: 21.89
Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading
Gunning Fog index : 18.50
Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text :
Coleman Liau index : 14.91
Flesh Kincaid Grade level : 15.53
ARI (Automated Readability Index) : 15.17
SMOG : 16.29
Flesch Reading Ease : 22.72
Is this good ?
it is hard for a computer to grade an essay - if you look on wikipedia you can see what these indexes mean and how they compute the score. they are basically math equations.
having said that, your flesch reading ease is probably too low - meaning your essay might be hard to understand or read w/o losing interest (think GMAT RC passage or article in an academic journal)
you probably are using too much flowery prose or too many syllables / words to convey a point that can be more concisely stated...
but again, it is just an algorithm and it can't understand your essay... your essay could kick @ss. take an honest look at it and be the judege