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5 Tips for Improving Your AWA Essay on the GRE

By accepted.com - Sep 1, 09:15 AM Comments [0]

The GRE has three sections: Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning, and the Analytical
Writing Assessment (AWA). For many students, the AWA is the hardest section. Here, you need
to write your own essay, rather than simply answering multiple choice questions as you would on
Quants and Verbal.

Your AWA will be graded on a qualitative scale. The better a writer you are, the more points you
get. Whether you are a novice writer or an expert writer, you want to aim for the best writing
quality possible on the GRE AWA. Below are some tips and tricks for doing just that.

Tip # 1: Read!
High scoring AWA essays are characterized by scholarly tone and sophisticated reasoning. To
create writing like this on your own, it helps to read other pieces of writing that show GRE-level
academic quality.

There are quite a few websites and publications that offer GRE-like reading. Here are several:

The New York Times

The Wall Street Journal
Art & Letters Daily
The Economist
The MIT Technology Review
Tip # 2: Use GRE Verbal vocabulary in your AWA Essays
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Keen observers may notice that the reading list above can double as reading practice for GRE
Verbal prep. And there is another aspect of GRE Verbal practice thats helpful for improving
your AWA Essay: GRE Verbal vocabulary!

The vocabulary you learn for GRE Verbal can also be used in your AWA essays to improve your
performance. Dont worry you dont need to use the full range of vocabulary youll find
throughout the GRE Verbal section. Simply mastering use of the most common GRE words can
boost your AWA GRE scores.
Tip # 3: Practice GRE Verbal Strengthen and Weaken Questions
GRE Verbal has a number of multiple choice questions that ask you to identify facts that if
true would either strengthen or weaken a written argument on the exam. This exact same skill is
also used in the AWA Essays on the GRE.

In the AWA Issue Essay, you have to design a strong argument for your personal stance on an
issue, sufficiently addressing any ideas or possibilities that could cast doubt on your argument.
And in the AWA Argument Essay, you are asked to find strengths and weaknesses in someone
elses argument. Building your skills on the GREs strengthen/weaken questions will help you
give well-supported opinions and intelligently dissect arguments on the GRE AWA.

Tip # 4: Take Advantage of ETSs Official Materials

To practice with GRE AWA questions that are truly similar to the ones youll see on test day,
you need to go to the source: ETS, the makers of the GRE exam.

On ETSs official website, there is a large pool of example topics for the Issue AWA Essay and
the Argument AWA Essay. ETSs official GRE website also has example responses with scorer
commentary for the Issue and Argument Tasks, and offers a general tutorial for the AWA
section. All of these free online resources are valuable for understanding, practicing, and
improving the AWA Essay on the GRE. And for a small extra fee, you can get more official
AWA prep material in the GRE Official Guide.
Tip # 5: Practice Writing
At the beginning of this list, I told you to read! And now we come full circle. Im telling you to
write! And dont just practice writing GRE essays. Practice writing in general, and make a
regular habit of writing. Keep a journal of your personal thoughts and opinions. Write your
reactions to things youve read or heard. Post your thoughts to Internet message boards, or leave
product reviews online. Or do other kinds of writing; just find a way to write regularly. This will
allow you to become more comfortable with writing, and to truly develop your voice as a writer.
Through writing practice, you can become the writer you need to be in order to improve and
master your GRE AWA Essay.
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Tone Up Your Writing: Confidence vs Arrogance

By accepted.com - Sep 12, 09:00 AM Comments [0]

Tone is often one of the aspects of writing that applicants find most difficult to pin down. And
yet, when youre writing, it is also one of the most important to control so that you maintain an
appropriate tone for your purpose.

One way to think about tone is to understand it as conveying your attitude toward your subject.
Two key steps can help you become more aware of your tone. First, pause and consider who
your audience is and what you are trying to communicate to them. Second, read your writing
aloud: hearing your words can enable you to recognize connotations and overtones that you
missed on the page.

What type of tone should you strive for in your admissions essay? And how can you ensure your
writing conveys the right attitude?
Your tone should be confident, professional, and courteous. It should convey your spirit of
intellectual curiosity/inquisitiveness and your collaborative mindset.

Confidence
Lets start with the issue of confidence.

How can you make sure your tone is confident without sounding arrogant? Here are five tips
for just-the-right tone:

1. When you describe your skills and qualifications, do so with self-assurance. Dont diminish or
hide your contribution and dont sound uncertain of yourself.
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2. At the same time, focus on showing what you did, how you contributed, and what you learned
from it, instead of simply making unsupported statements. For example, instead of just saying I
have strong communication skills, illustrate those skills in action: As a research assistant, I met
regularly with all members of the research team and made formal presentations of my findings
each week.
3. Quantify whenever possible and provide relevant, impressive specifics. Led team of 5 on 3
continents is better than Led team.

4. Beware of words and qualifiers that make you sound uncommitted to your position. (Seems,
appears, might be, etc.) If you mean is, say is. Better yet, use strong verbs. (If youre
describing provisional research findings, provisional-sounding words are ok!)

5. Remember what youre interested in. What truly attracts you to this program? Highlight your
real enthusiasm, and let your confidence shine.
To summarize:

Back up your assertions with illustrations and details.

Watch out for words that weaken your position by making you sound uncertain.
Find the source of your confidence: the reasons youre applying to the program in the first
place.

Arrogance
The negative flip-side of confidence is arrogance. It is an application killer and a quality you
must avoid.

We cant really overstate how important it is to root out any whiff of arrogance in your essay.
Since so many grad programs rely on teamwork, adcoms are looking for candidates who will be
good colleagues. Its critical to come across as someone who works well with other people. How
can you avoid errors in tone that project arrogance?

Here are six tips to eradicate arrogance from your essays:

1. As you describe your contribution, dont make your teams work sound less important, inflate
your work, or (explicitly or implicitly) describe yourself as being smarter or better than your
colleagues.

a. Most people dont make this error explicitly, but I have seen essays where people wrote some
variation of I left this job because I was so much more advanced than my colleagues there.
Please dont write that or anything close to it.

b. If youve left a position, express the decision in a positive way: instead of saying, I was more
advanced than my colleagues there, or I didnt like the environment, write that you moved to
the new position in order to do XYZ, or develop your skills in ABC, or because it gave you more
responsibility.
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2. Dont present yourself as being the only qualified candidate. No matter how great you are,
there are a lot of other great candidates. So dont say things like I am the only one to

3. Dont belittle other people. If you excelled or had a great opportunity, talk about that
opportunity and what you did; dont imply that other people from your school or company were
not as successful, ambitious, or prepared. In other words:

i. Instead of: Coming to college was a revelation, because I had been surrounded by
unmotivated students all my life.

ii. Try: In college, I was in my element, surrounded by other motivated students.

4. Dont boast about test scores, grades, or other info that probably shouldnt be in your essay
anyway (ie, things that are on your CV or application form).

5. Avoid words that can connote arrogance, especially if you use then primarily in reference to
yourself and your own accomplishments. (Words like superior or exceptional.)

6. Similarly, make sure you convey genuine enthusiasm about the program: dont write as though
they should be lucky to have you, but as though you know that it is the right place for you.
To summarize:

Dont belittle other people.

Dont exaggerate your contribution.
Remember the adcom is considering you as a potential colleague not just weighing your stats.

As I said above, a helpful way to check your tone is to read your essay aloud. Ask yourself: Do I
sound confident? Do I sound like I am making a judgment about something I dont really mean
to be judgmental about? Have I used I too much when talking about a group project?

This is also where its very helpful to ask someone else to read your essay. Ask them to pay
attention to your tone, and mark any places that sound negative or un-collegial.

Next time, Ill address how to maintain a professional tone.

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UGH! THOSE @!#$* WORD LIMITS!!!

By accepted.com - Sep 16, 09:00 AM Comments [0]

Now, now. Dont get angry. Deal.

First and foremost, focus. And use writing techniques that convey your message and stay within
the word limits. What writing techniques are those? Glad you asked!

1. Minimize use of the passive voice.

Passive: Experience A has been complemented by experience B. (8 words)
Active: Experience B complements experience A. (5 words)

2. Use active, descriptive verbs.

Blah: I was the one who made the decision (8 words)
Strong: I decided (2 words)

3. Minimize use of the verb to be (Please note that I did not say eliminate.)
Overuse of to-be: She is a skillful negotiator. (5 words)
Strong Active Verb: She negotiates skillfully. (3 words)
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4. Check whether you need the verb preceding an infinitive.

Surplus words: She was able to fix (5 words)
More direct phrasing: She fixed (2 words)

These few techniques will strengthen your writing, help you stay within those limits, and give
you one less reason to curse your applications.

5 Pointers for Projecting Professionalism in Your Statement of Purpose

By accepted.com - Sep 13, 09:00 AM Comments [0]

In my previous post, I discussed the importance of maintaining an appropriate tone in your

admissions essay, and provided tips for checking your tone, specifically for finding a confident
tone and avoiding arrogance.

Once again, tone refers to a writers attitude toward their subject (and their reader). Your tone
comes across in your choice of vocabulary, whether you choose formal or informal language,
and so on. It can be subtle, but it is very important.
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A strong personal statement or SOP communicates confidence and professionalism, along with
your spirit of collaboration, your intellectual curiosity, innovation, and inquisitiveness. How can
you ensure your writing conveys the right attitude?

Professional Tone
Here are Five Pointers for Professional Tone:

1. First off, what do I mean by professional tone in this context?

Think about whom youre writing for: admissions professionals, and possibly professors
(depending on your field). In other words: a. educated professionals; and b. members of the field
youre hoping to enter. This means that you should address them as you would someone you
respect. No need for stilted formality but this isnt an email or text message to a friend, either.
Grammar, spelling, capitalization, punctuation all count.

2. Follow all of the adcoms directions.

This means several things: answering the questions as they are asked; keeping to the requested
length; not submitting additional materials they havent asked for; etc.

3. Describe your experiences, interests, and goals in a thoughtful way that shows your
mature engagement with your field.
There is, for example, both a content and a tonal difference between saying you want to study a
particular language because it will give you the skills to work in international development in
country X, and saying you want to study that language because you just always liked the way it
sounds.

4. Let your tone show your positive, collaborative outlook.

When you describe work you did with a team, use language that reflects that cooperation (we),
and take a positive tone (for example, show what you gained/learned from your collaboration
and how it prepared you for graduate school).
5. Remember that your professional tone should extend to every interaction you have with
the school whether written or spoken.
Each email, phone call, visit, interview every interaction with every person you meet at your
target school must contribute to their overall picture of you as a courteous, professional, positive
candidate.

To summarize:

Keep your audience in mind.

Keep every interaction you have with the adcom professional, courteous, and positive.
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One of the most common miscalculations in tone relates to this very issue of positivity. If your
tone veers into the negative, the adcom will have reason to worry about your attitude.

Avoiding Negativity
Here are some tips for avoiding negativity in order to keep your tone professional:

1. Weve written elsewhere about how its more compelling to read statements that are phrased
positively than negatively. In other words, if one experience didnt work out, dont say that you
decided to do something new because it was not great or a negative experience; say that you
chose to move on to a new opportunity in order to develop your skills or explore an area you
were excited about or assume greater responsibility. This is important both for the energy and
strength of your writing, and also for your tone: if you phrase statements in a negative way, you
risk coming across as negative. Its much better to be moving towards something attractive than
fleeing something ugly.

2. Another way that your writing can create a negative tone is through qualifying words. I taught
undergraduate composition I know that writers sometimes use adverbs to pad their writing!
And Im not saying that all adverbs are bad. Deployed carefully, they can help you pinpoint
exactly the description youre looking for. But sometimes, qualifiers can pull your sentence into
territory you should probably avoid. Take these sentences as an example:

In the end, I found the experience genuinely enjoyable.

I actually enjoyed it.

These words can have the effect not always intended by the writer of making the experience
sound not truly enjoyable or impressive. (To say you actually enjoyed something makes it
sound like you didnt expect to and why risk raising the adcoms doubts about your attitude?)
A more positive phrasing would simply be: I enjoyed the experience.

3. Dont comment negatively on your undergraduate program (or a company you worked for). If
youre trying to explain a low GPA or other academic challenge, straightforwardly take
responsibility for it and do not attribute your struggles to anyone else.

To summarize:

Phrase sentences positively (focus on what you DID, not what you didnt do).
Avoid qualifying words that make you sound halfhearted or grudging.

Make a tone check part of your editing process, and youll be on your way to finding the sweet-
spot: professional, positive, and confident.

[For more advice, check out my previous post, Tone Up Your Writing: Confidence vs
Arrogance.]