AWA Score Importance?

Question

Hi everyone,

I got my scores. I'm wondering how important is the AWA score? I mean.. when most people ask what they scored on the GMAT, it's just the 3 digit score out of 800, and sometimes not even mentioning the writing score. I'm wondering because I did well in the quantatitive and writing, but poorly on the verbal. How do business schools admissions look at this score?

Thanks.

bakfed · Answer

did you mean that you did well on the quant and verbal section, but poorly on the writing (AWA)? At any rate, going back to your subject line, your AWA score is only as important as a standard number that b-school look at. Meaning, if you have a score of a 4.5 (or even a 4) or above, you really shouldn't be too concerned about it. However, if it's lower then you need to think about bringing your A-game to the essays. One AWA score should not be defective enough to earn a ding. Unless you have a 1 or 1.5 (maybe 2), then I wouldn't worry about it. Again, things can be compensated (i.e. low GMAT but high GPA, low GPA but great WE, a low AWA but a high verbal percentile and great essays).

bb · Answer

The AWA score is a bit weird one.
It is more of a pass/fail thing and also to compare your writing style (admissions will get a copy of your gmat essays). So in case your applications are flawless and you have a 3.0 on your AWA, they will flag it. Otherwise, not much attention is paid to it...

bayareastudent · Answer

No, I got a 6 AWA, but got rocked on my verbal part.. I'm taking it again in a month, but just wondering about this because I didn't expect to do this well on the AWA part.

Thanks for the info!

barrykw68 · Answer

I read somewhere that the AWA score is reported separately and has no bearing on the 200-800 scoring. Is this correct?

bayareastudent · Answer

Yah, that is correct. They give you 3 raw scores with percentiles.. The quantative and verbal scores are then combined into the 200-800 score and a percentile, while the writing score remains out of 6.0 and a percentile.

barrykw68 · Answer

OK, thanks for the clarification.

EBM · Answer

From what I understand it's not too hard to get a 5.0+ on the AWA as long as your grammar is decent and you make a solid effort to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the prompt, or create a convincing case for your opinion in the other prompt. In this way it almost replicates the TOEFL.

I don't have much to compare it to because I only took it once and was a history major in undergrad, so analyzing and constructing arguments into a decent-sounding essay comes pretty quickly and naturally to me. I don't know exactly where they draw the line between a 5.0, 5.5, or 6.0.

As mentioned above, I think the big red flag would be if you got a 4.0 on the AWA then turned in flawless, polished essays--the reasonable assumption would be that you had a little too much "coaching" on your essays.

abelnazareth · Answer

Hi, do you have any idea how percentile works? I got 4.0 in AWA with 19%. I think the percentile is very low. any idea whether 4 with 19% is a good score?

vinzycoolfire · Answer

i read an interview of some admission council member who said they dont care about AWA at all. Seems like it is there to test how alert we are after writing two essays.

EBM · Answer

That means a 4.0 is 19th percentile, which means 81% of people did better than you. If I remember right a 6.0 was 91st percentile, which means about 9% of people must get a 6.0.

brightside · Answer

Hi I got a 760 (51,41) and AWA 4.5. Please tell how would this AWA score affect the odds.
I am a non-native English speaker.

Thanks

subhashghosh · Answer

You're cool, AWA is not a problem in your case.

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