Incomplete Essay on the Exam!

What do you mean by incomplete? How would you tell a complete essay from an incomplete one?

DD, thanks for responding to the post! To give an example of a "incomplete" essay - suppose in case of a argument essay, following the template, one types the introductory paragraph, and then the subsequent paragraphs explaining the reasoning or citing examples, but fails to conclude the essay with a last paragraph - which is supposed to include the summary of the reasons cited and points that could strengthen the argument. In such a case, would the e-rater give the candidate a very low score (say something below 3) or is there a scope to score in the range of 4-4.5?

Look forward to your reply.

Thanks again!

First things first, e-rater (or the manual evaluator) will score the essay on its current content. So, if you failed to write the concluding paragraph, then ofcourse both e-rater and evaluator will evaluate the essay considering there is no concluding paragraph. Hence, your overall score will be less.

One advice that i used on my actual exam was to write the Introductory and Concluding para first, and then start with body paras. If you think you do not have sufficient time, you can always reduce the content of body paras or the number of body paras.

hope you find it useful.

It is hard to tell, so let's wait and see.
Based on some reports, e-rater rates longer essays higher (officlal-gmat-awa-tool-gmat-write-practicing-awa-77678.html#p762269)

Thanks DD! the insight in the link that you posted was really helpful. Looks like no other choice but to write more words..

Thanks maanavrelan4gmat, I'll keep your suggestion in mind.

Just wanted to see if any one had further insight on this? I took the gmat today...(felt extremely unprepared and never actually wrote a complete essay - just wrote some bullets on GMAT practice exam 1). On the actual exam, I did not have time to finish the section, (much less check over any of what I wrote), and the screen skipped before I could delete 2-3 blank lines in my introduction...To be honest, I am not even sure if the intro was even in complete sentences/coherent to begin with.

Will this automatically result in a 0 or 1? And how would a top school look at my app? I would be happy with a 4 on AWA. Unfortunately, I already decided to send my score because I was pleased with it and wanted to take advantage of the 5 free reports but forgot to think about what a bad AWA score could do to my application. Any information would be appreciated! Thanks in advance!

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