High GMAT (770) but a low AWA (4.0). A reason to worry?

Question

Hi All, I got my official score report yesterday. It reads as: Verbal: 44 Quant: 51 Total: 770 AWA: 4.0

IR: 7 Though I was happy with the overall score, a low AWA score is worrying me. I just want to ask whether a low score on AWA will affect my prospects. Also, do schools, especially the top b-schools in the US, have any AWA score cut-off. Please guide me.

Admissionado · Answer

More or less: It doesn't matter. 
You have a 770!!!!! Go out and celebrate!

PaulBodine · Answer

Rasharma, I agree with Jon: yYou done good. Schools don't try to read a lot into AWA scores, let alone a perfectly acceptable score of 4. Enjoy. ---Paul Bodine, Great Applications for Business School, www.paulsbodine.com/testimonials

VeritasPrepRon · Answer

Hi rasharma, in fact you should be celebrating as mentioned by other posters. You shouldn't be worried for two reasons. The first of which is that a 4.0 AWA is not that bad. If you'd gotten a 3, you'd go from "Adequate" to "Limited", which is significantly worse. A 4.0 is perfectly acceptable. Secondly, and more importantly, you did extremely well in the Verbal section as well. 44 in Verbal is 97th percentile. You don't get 97th percentile in verbal by accident. You probably went a little off topic on the AWA or some other minor detail. Your candidature seems quite strong with the numbers you've posted. Go out and celebrate, and don't worry too much, you did well on the GMAT.

rasharma · Answer

Hi Everyone,

Thanks a lot for your feedback. I feel much relaxed now and will focus on other prospects of my application.

Regards,
Raghav Sharma

High GMAT (770) but a low AWA (4.0). A reason to worry?

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards