How to Prepare for
the Analytical Writing Section
Even the most confident writers should spend time preparing for the Analytical Writing section of the GRE to understand the skills measured and how the tasks are scored. It may also be useful to review the scoring guides, sample topics, scored sample essay responses, and rater commentary for each task.
Therefore, it is also important to budget your time to allow sufficient time to consider the issue or argument and the specific instructions, plan a response, and compose your essay. Although the GRE raters who score your essays understand the time constraints and 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. An occasional spelling or grammatical error won’t affect your score, but serious and persistent errors detract from the overall effectiveness of your writing and lower your score accordingly.
Published Topics Pools for Analytical Writing
To help you prepare for the Analytical Writing measure, 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:
- Issue Topic Pool (PDF)
- Argument Topic Pool (PDF)
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