GMAT AWA Grading

The AWA is graded on a scale from 0-6 in increments of 0.5 (see AWA score breakdown). The AWA essays are graded in the following manner:

  • Essays graded by a teaching assistant, graduate student, or professor. This individual will assign each essay a grade ranging from 0-6 (in increments of 0.5).
  • A computer program will 'read' your essays and assign a grade based upon an evaluation of more than 50 structural and linguistic features, including organization of ideas, syntactic variety, and topical analysis.
  • If the grade assigned by the computer program and human differ by more than one point (which is rare), a second human reader will grade your writing and resolve the discrepancy, determining the final AWA score.
  • Your score is the average of the two grades that count (usually the first human and the E-rater). If the average is between two half-point intervals, your score is rounded up.

Your essays are graded based upon the following criteria:

  • Your ability to write in accordance with standard written English (i.e., spell properly, use good grammar, and employ proper sentence structure).
  • The quality of the ideas you present. In other words, whether your analysis is insightful and appropriate.
  • The extent to which you provide (and flesh out) relevant examples to support the points in your essay.