Omitting the essay - good strategy?

Question

Hi,

I talked to a friend of mine recently who advised me to just completely omit the essay. Seeing how it doesn't directly affect your score and only uses up some of your precious concentration before you get to the actual questions, I can definitely see her point.

So she did exactly that and only wrote one sentence or something. Her final score for the rest of the GMAT was excellent, something in the high 700s, and obviously she didnt have any trouble getting accepted by top universities like Oxford.

I'm going to do my GMAT later this months and I'm contemplating whether to follow the same strategy. I could really imagine that omitting the essay will benefit you in terms of concentration for the other questions, however I'm just not sure whether some universities do take its score into consideration, too. Is it even listed on the official scorecard? And for me as a non-native speaker, all of those universities do require a TOEFL anyway, so I'd think they will take that one to assess my language abilities instead of some GMAT essay.

So what'd you suggest - omit the essay because it's not really important anyway, or write the essay at the expense of losing concentration for the serious parts of the GMAT?

jazzman · Answer

I've never heard of anyone endorsing this strategy, and personally, wouldn't use it. While it seems to have worked out for your friend, it's seems very risky to me.

ugafan · Answer

i hate the essay(time waster) as much as the next guy but its part of the exam to test your stamina. my practice tests ive done without the essays but will be incorporating them into my final 5 tests solely for the purpose of making sure i make it through the ENTIRE exam. some say the essays help ease the nerves before the REAL gmat. I hope that will be the case for me. Just hope to make it through the verbal with energy and focus.

GL with exam.

GL with exam.

JeeMat · Answer

Well - I'm not even sure whether it really is risky. I can't really imagine anyone's really considering the essay at all.. all universities do publish some sort of minimum GMAT requirement, but I've never heard of a minimum GMAT essay requirement

Nonetheless I'd probably have a bad feeling about not doing it at all.. tough decision. I think it could really help to conserve my concentration. To be quite honest, I won't do the GMAT with some sort of attitude for sportsmanship

Unfortunately, I'm going to need a terribly high score for my target universities and its going to be really tough for me, so I will definitely try to seize every (legal) opportunity that I can think of to improve my chances! (Too bad this was actually the only opportunity I could think of so far :D ) Thanks

Best of luck to you, too!

GMATLA · Answer

There are many reasons why this is an absolutely terrible idea. I think it could actually keep you from getting into your desired schools.

1. Your score will not count in the mind of Adcoms b/c you skipped the AWA. The GMAT is a marathon, if you choose not to do the AWA you basically cheated.
2. The Adcoms will question your drive and common sense. This is unethical, and will most likely raise a HUGE red flag to Adcoms. 
3. This question has come up before, and all professional admission consultants would 100% advise against it.
4. Many people actually site the AWA as improving their score. This is because the AWA section allows them to settle into the test and warm up their brain. If you write 2 great essays it can actually boost your confidence going into the test.

If you'd like to give less thought to the AWA, you should come in with a set format and template. Spend 15 min on each essay, and score a 4.0+. A 4.0 is considered generally acceptable, anything less could litterally keep you out of schools b/c they will question if you wrote your essays and if you have the ability to write in English. Not only that, but Adcoms have the ability to read your AWA essays if they choose to do so. If they see a 0, I'm sure they'd choose to see them, and would see that you wrote NOTHING. Bad idea.

DO NOT SKIP THE AWA EVER! It could litterally be the choice that keeps you out of every school you apply to. It looks terrible, and will make Adcoms question you judgement, decission making ability, motivation, ethics, achademic ability, etc... Every important characteristic in an MBA hopeful. What better way to tell an Adcom that you are a corner cutter.

IanStewart · Answer

It would in almost all circumstances be a terrible idea to skip the essays. There's a GMAC research report that studied how MBA programs use your essay scores. While it is true that some programs ignore the essays, a significant fraction do consider your essay score to be important. I can't recall the exact numbers, but you can find the report on their site (if memory serves, somewhere around two thirds of MBA programs at least sometimes consider essay scores to be important). Not only do some programs consider the score, but programs also have the option to read your essays, which they can use to get additional insight into your personality, and to confirm that you likely wrote your own application essays. Importantly, if you skip the essays and get a 700, and a different applicant writes the essays and gets a 700, whose score is more impressive? Surely the person who wrote the essays has the more impressive test result; they didn't have the advantage of saving an hour at the start of their test.

So skipping the essays is very bad for several reasons:

* some schools consider your essay score, or your actual essays, to be important when considering your application
* your overall score is much less impressive if you skip the essays
* you will appear to be very lazy if you skip that portion of the test - a zero on that section of course looks really bad

The only situation where you might skip the essays is if you knew the programs you were interested in did not care about your essay score at all, and would not discount your /800 score at all if you skipped the essay. That might be true for some academic programs (Masters programs, say) which require a GMAT score, but I'd almost never recommend it for an MBA applicant. The one exception is the case of an applicant who has taken the GMAT already and has received a conditional offer, and who must only achieve a certain result in, say, the Quant section to be accepted to a program. In such cases, the essay might not matter, though I'd recommend confirming that with your program of choice first.

fiendex · Answer

A agree with IanStewart that it is not a good idea and of any use to skip the essay section. However, it might help you to simply adhere to a template and write the essay with an indifferent attitude while trying not to use to much "brain power". This approach will probably still result in a 4.5+ score without leaving to much exhaustion.
Indeed, if you are sure about the requirements at your target university, you could try taking this approach, although this sounds still a little bit silly to me. For an MBA programme it is unacceptable, whereas I could imagine some masters programme in Europe  might  let it slide.

geometric · Answer

I don't see the value in this. In fact, as some have already noted, the essays seem like a great warm-up, if anything. It's not very hard to write a 4/5 essay, either. You only need to reproduce a few basic templates. For instance, you can completely agree with A over B and explain why, you lean towards A although you see limitations in both, and you disagree with both and explain why. With even a poorly worded essay, that should get you into 4 territory.

JeeMat · Answer

Oh well

You convinced me, I will actually write the essay then. Even though I intend to apply for a regular Masters programme for now, I can't even rule out that I'll apply for a MBA in a couple of years so yea, if you're saying those programmes in particular do consider the essay it'd seem quite stupid indeed to skip the essay. Thanks for your suggestions!

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Omitting the essay - good strategy?

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