I get it. The AWA. This annoying part of the GMAT that can potentially make even a 700+ score look a little less bright. Why take the risk at all?
That being said... if the ONLY reason you are thinking of giving the Online before April 8th is to not give the ruddy AWA, it might be worth reconsidering.
One reason is simply because the new section order flexibility and time breaks in the new Online can be (quite) helpful in getting your Quant and Verbal scores up - which are definitely (much!) more important many might say.
A second reason is because you still only have the current number of Online attempts.
A third reason - and take this with a grain of salt - is that you can likely mitigate a lower AWA in your essays a lot easier than a lower score out of 800.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What you can do to improve your AWA:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/how-to-get-6 ... 64327.htmlThe person who created this step by step outline - " a non-native speaker and having not written a damn essay (of any kind) in many many years, I was very scared of the AWA. So, I went through every guide that I could find and wrote nearly 25-30 essays. Even had a friend grade them for me.....Pathetic, huh? " - "took the GMAT twice and scored 6.0 each time."
I'd suggest taking the time to write some AWAs rather than only memorize the structure. Going into "auto-pilot" mode the moment you see the prompt may be helpful on this section.