<p>Hi,
I’m planning to take the GRE soon and attend graduate school for Political Science. I have been scoring in the 600-650 range for Verbal and around 700 recently for Quant (obviously, I’m not going to be going to an Ivy League school).</p>
<p>I just took CAT that came with the 2009 Princeton Review book I purchased and paid the 5.99 to have my essays graded by a “livegrader”. My argument portion hasn’t come back yet but my Issues essay came back almost immediately (which makes me believe it was not graded by a “living, breathing person”. Anyway, I only scored a 3 on that portion, and was shocked. I’ve never had any trouble with analytic essays or the like. The “response” said I needed more concret examples about “real” people and less generalities and hypothetical situations.</p>
<p>Does anyone know how accurate these "livegrader"s are? (what did you recieve from them and then on the real test adjusted for any AWA studying between the two).</p>
<p>Also, how important are AWA scores for acceptance into graduate school?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>The AWA score is relatively unimportant - remember that any program that cares about writing ability will have your writing sample in front of them. But of course you should strive to get as high a score as possible on each section.</p>
<p>The key to scoring well on the essays is to understand that the readers are looking ONLY for a highly structured argument - some people overthink the essays, imagining there’s some sort of hidden agenda and waste their time trying to “fit” their esssay into it. </p>
<p>One basic format is something like this:</p>
<p>1) Restate the question to reflect your position on the issue
1b) Summarize how the 3 or 4 specific facts you’ll be using support your position
2,3,4) Separate paragraphs stating your argument/fact and why it supports your position
5) Re-summarize your facts and state your conclusion clearly.</p>
<p>Use the note paper to sketch an outline of your essay.
Avoid analogies like the plague!
Use complex (but not run-on) sentences.
Use punctuation correctly.
Stay “on topic”</p>
<p>If you can, try to draw on disparate disciplines. I was able to quote Cicero, mention the social impact of the automobile, and discuss violent colonial persecution of “free love” to support my position that legislation is inefective in regulating behavior.</p>
<p>So… without seeing your essay, I have to say you should take the reader seriously ONLY IF you indeed used generalities and hypothetical situations to support your position. As you certainly know, both are poor tools of argument. </p>
<p>I didn’t use a grader for my practice tests, but I did get a 5.5 on the AW.</p>
<p>WIlliamC, can you elaborate on the use of analogies and hypothetical scenarios and maybe give an example.</p>
<p>Sure! </p>
<p>Argument by analogy is a claim that because two (or more) things have certain elements in common, they also have other elements in common. They are easily refuted by citing counter examples (that is examples in which two things share the common elements but clearly do not share the other elements), by examining the relevance of the common elements to the allegedly shared other elements, and so forth.</p>
<p>Here’s an example:</p>
<p><bad analogy=“”>
It can be readily shown that there are no technologically advanced indigenous civilizations in sub-tropical South America. High temperatures and easily harvested edible plants naturally lead to indolence on the part of persons in such societies. Because Upper Nile area shares these traits the ancient citizens of Upper Egypt must have been indolent as well.
</bad></p>
<p>Of course, Upper Egypt was the cradle of Egyptian civilization. And the archaeological record shows the natives had a vigorous civilization engaging international trade, skilled metal and stone work, conquering neighboring peoples and so forth from a very early date.</p>
<p>Hypothetical scenarios are nearly always bad argument simply because they are so easily “cherry picked” to support the writer’s argument. It’s always easy to create a counter scenario or to point out the weaknesses in the original. They often show up in the form of “straw man” arguments.</p>
<p>There’s a pretty detailed discussion of “bad argument” including analogies (and much more) here:
[The</a> Info-pollution Lexicon](<a href=“http://info-pollution.com/lexicon.htm]The”>http://info-pollution.com/lexicon.htm)</p>
<p>Thank you for your detailed help! I actually took the exam last week and scored a 4.5 which I’m not happy about but at least it’s not a 3.5. I would retake for the AWA but my other scores (670 V 730 Q) were the best I could expect to do and I don’t want to risk lowering those scores. Also, there’s no guarentee I’d do better on the AWA. I really don’t know how to give them what they want (even with the great help of yours!). Hopefully my AWA will be partially offset by my decent verbal and admissions boards will at least read my essays. :)</p>