GRE Essays: Should I Care?
As a GRE instructor, I’m often asked, “Do the essays matter?” The answer is that it depends.
What are the essays on the GRE?
When you show up to take the GRE, the essays—also known as the Analytical Writing Measure—are the first thing you’ll see. You’ll take your seat at the computer, click “Start,” and be asked to write an essay in response to a statement about politics, art, education, etc.—a topic you could write an essay on without specialized background knowledge. You will have 30 minutes to write this first essay, and then you’ll be given a second essay prompt, to which you’ll also have 30 minutes to respond.
In other words, for the first hour of the GRE, you’ll be writing. Unlike the rest of the test—the Verbal and Quant sections, of which four are scored (two Verbal and two Quant) and one is unscored—which come in any order, the essays always come first.
Why don’t people think the essays matter?
There are a couple of reasons why the essays have earned a reputation of “not mattering.” First, because your essay-writing is not scored on the same 130-170 point scale as the Verbal and Quant sections, it isn’t what people have in mind when they tell you their “GRE score.” For the essays, you receive a separate score. This score is on a scale of 0-6 and given in half-point increments. Most people get between a 3 and a 4.
Second, the GRE is a test required for a broad range of programs at a broad range of schools. Expectations and requirements when it comes to GRE scores vary tremendously, and it isn’t uncommon for a program not even to mention the essays. (For example, a particular graduate program might report on its website that its median GRE scores are 160 Verbal and 160 Quant, and leave out the essays altogether.) Indeed, this is common enough that a popular perception is that the essays “don’t matter.”
But before you dismiss them, here are a few things to consider:
- Some schools/programs do care about the essay score. It is very, very important to check—and check again—the expectations and requirements of any program to which you might apply before simply deciding not to care about the essays. It doesn’t matter that most programs aren’t essay-focused if a program you are applying to is—that’s the one that matters to you and your future.
- Some schools/programs care that you reach a threshold in two out of three GRE categories. Sometimes a school won’t call out the essays specifically but will state an expectation that you, as an applicant, score over a particular threshold (often a percentile, like 70th percentile) in two out of the three parts of the test: Analytical Writing, Verbal, and Quant. This presents a major opportunity for you if you’re someone who struggles in, say, Quant: You may have a lot of difficulty topping the 70th percentile on the math portion of the test, but topping the 70th percentile on the essays is a more achievable goal for you.
- The essays still reflect on you as an applicant. Just because a school or program doesn’t formally state that the essays “matter” to your application doesn’t mean that they don’t. The school will see your entire score for a given test date—including your essay score. Deciding that it doesn’t matter at all and that you’re not even going to try, and therefore winding up with a score of, say, a 2, doesn’t look great. I’m not saying it’s going to ruin your chances of admission, but it certainly isn’t going to help them.
How to think about the GRE essays
In sum, don’t assume that the programs to which you’re applying don’t care about the essays. They might. If even a single program does care—or even cares implicitly by stating a threshold requirement in two of the three parts of the test—you will want to take them seriously by preparing for them, rather than going in and winging it, or casually writing an unstructured or excessively brief response to an essay prompt.
Second, even if no program to which you’re applying officially “cares” about the essays, remember that you are being represented by your application in full, which includes your GRE essay score. A blasé approach to the essays doesn’t reflect well on you as a conscientious test taker, writer, and student. You certainly shouldn’t prioritize the essays in terms of your study preparation before the test or energy allotment during it—but neither should you assume you can get by simply rattling off a few sentences and calling it an “essay.” In this scenario, I suggest still doing your best while saving your energy for the main event—the Quant and Verbal sections.
NEXT: Top 7 GRE Essay Tips
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Mary Richter is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Nashville, Tennessee. Mary is one of those weirdos who loves taking standardized tests, and she has been teaching them for 15 years. When she’s not teaching the LSAT or GRE for ManhattanPrep, she’s writing novels under the last name Adkins. You can find them wherever you buy books. Check out Mary’s upcoming GRE prep offerings here!