The Analytical Writing section tests your critical thinking and analytical writing skills. It assesses your
ability to articulate and support complex ideas, construct and evaluate arguments, and sustain a focused and
coherent discussion. It does not assess specific content knowledge.
The Analytical Writing section consists of two separately-timed analytical writing tasks:
a 30-minute "Analyze an Issue" task
a 30-minute "Analyze an Argument" task
The Issue task presents an opinion on an issue of broad interest followed by specific instructions on how to
respond to that issue. You are required to evaluate the issue, considering its complexities, and develop an
argument with reasons and examples to support your views.
The Argument task presents a different challenge from that of the Issue task: it requires you to evaluate a
given argument according to specific instructions. You will need to consider the logical soundness of the
argument rather than to agree or disagree with the position it presents.
The two tasks are complementary in that one requires you to construct your own argument by taking a
position and providing evidence supporting your views on the issue, whereas the other requires you to
evaluate someone else's argument by assessing its claims and evaluating the evidence it provides.
Preparing for the Analytical Writing Section
Everyone—even the most practiced and confident of writers—should spend some time preparing for the
Analytical Writing section before arriving at the test center. It is important to review the skills measured,
how the section is scored, scoring guides and score level descriptions, sample topics, scored sample essay
responses, and reader commentary.
The tasks in the Analytical Writing section relate to a broad range of subjects—from the fine arts and
humanities to the social and physical sciences—but no task requires specific content knowledge. In fact,
each task has been field-tested to ensure that it possesses several important characteristics, including the
following:
GRE test takers, regardless of their field of study or special interests, understood the task and
could easily respond to it.
The task elicited the kinds of complex thinking and persuasive writing that university faculty
consider important for success in graduate school.
The responses were varied in content and in the way the writers developed their ideas.
To help you prepare for the Analytical Writing section of the revised General Test, the GRE Program has
published the entire pool of tasks from which your test tasks will be selected. You might find it helpful to
review the Issue and Argument pools. You can view the published pools on the Web at www.ets.org/gre.
Test-Taking Strategies for the Analytical Writing Section
It is important to budget your time. Within the 30-minute time limit for the Issue task, you will need to
allow sufficient time to consider the issue and the specific instructions, plan a response, and compose your
essay. Within the 30-minute time limit for the Argument task, you will need to allow sufficient time to
consider the argument and the specific instructions, plan a response, and compose your essay. Although
GRE readers understand the time constraints under which you write and will consider your response a first
draft, you still want it to be the best possible example of your writing that you can produce under the testing
conditions.
Save a few minutes at the end of each timed task to check for obvious errors. Although an occasional
spelling or grammatical error will not affect your score, severe and persistent errors will detract from the
overall effectiveness of your writing and thus lower your score.
How the Analytical Writing Section is Scored
