From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,400 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Understanding essay scoring criteria

Understanding essay scoring criteria

From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

Start my 1-month free trial

Understanding essay scoring criteria

- [Instructor] So, the GMAT does tell us the criteria it uses to score essays, but, unfortunately, those criteria are pretty brief and somewhat abstract. Fortunately, they have published several sample essay responses, along with grader commentary from which we can discern what graders like and what they don't. So, in this video, I'll talk about the criteria essay graders use so you can understand what kind of writing will be rewarded. So, I'm going to sort of summarize what the GMAT says are the characteristics of the highest scoring responses. They have great quality of ideas, very good development of ideas, good support of ideas, organization and logical transitions, and then use of correct English. So, I know these are pretty abstract terms, but it basically means that you have a compelling line of reasoning that you sustain throughout the essay in terms of developing ideas and supporting them in terms of criticizing that argument, that your essay is organized well with…

Contents