Understanding AWA Scoring

How AWA Is Scored

Each of your essays in the AWA section will be given two independent ratings, one of which may be performed by an automated essay-scoring engine. The automated essay-scoring engine is an electronic system that evaluates more than 50 structural and linguistic features, including organization of ideas, syntactic variety, and topical analysis. If the two ratings differ by more than one point, another evaluation by an expert reader is required to resolve the discrepancy and determine the final score. College and university faculty members trained as readers for the AWA will consider the following: the overall quality of your ideas about the issue and argument presented your overall ability to organize, develop, and express those ideas the relevant supporting reasons and examples you used your ability to control the elements of standard written English In considering the elements of standard written English, readers are trained to be sensitive and fair in evaluating the responses of examinees whose first language is not English. If you have reason to believe that your scores for the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) portion of the GMAT test are not accurate, you may request that your essays be rescored.