There are two essays on the GRE. They come first. Both are unavoidable. Unfortunately, very few programs care about your essay score. Before you spend time preparing for the essays, call the programs to which you plan to apply and ask them if they plan to use or look at your essay score. If they don’t, skip this chapter. If your program is highly competitive, then all numbers count and you should keep reading.
The first of the GRE’s two essays is the Issue essay. On this essay you will be given two topics, called prompts, from which to choose, and 30 minutes to craft and write your essay. You will be given a specific task to perform, but essentially your job is to formulate an opinion on one of those prompts and to support it with well-chosen examples. It’s really more like a debate team exercise than a writing exercise. You need to craft the strongest argument you can, and you have 30 minutes in which to do it.
On the second essay you are the judge. You will be presented with someone else’s argument, and it is your job to evaluate its strengths as an argument. Again, you will be given an argument and a specific assignment, but no matter what, you will have to be familiar with and evaluate the basic parts of an argument. It doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree, only whether or not the argument is logically sound, and the issue is thoroughly considered and effectively presented.
Both of your essays will be scored on a six-point scale in half-point increments, and then the two scores will be averaged and rounded to the nearest half-point. If you score a 5 on one essay and a 6 on another, you will end up with a 5.5. A 5.5, by the way, puts you in the 87th percentile. You must score a 4.5 to put yourself above the 50th percentile or higher. Here is the breakdown of percentiles by score:
For both essays, it is critically important to consider the reader. ETS says that each reader will spend two minutes on your essay, but really, it’s more like one. They call it “holistic grading” and claim that they consider the overall impact of the whole essay. You have a very short time to grab their attention, make a few strong points, and then wrap up. Your job is not to write the best essay ever. Not only do you not have enough time, but a beautifully written, crafted essay that takes a long time to develop and is full of deliciously subtle points may very well miss the mark. Your job is to give them what they’re looking for, quickly and accessibly, so that they can give you the score you want.
Because this is a standardized test, it is not about opinion. It is not the reader’s job to respond personally to your arguments or your opinions. In fact, they have a very specifically defined scoring rubric. They are looking at three things: the quality of your thinking, the quality of your organization, and the quality of your writing. Each one counts equally. All three must be present to some degree to score in the top half. An essay in the bottom half, scoring a 1, 2, or 3, will be missing one or more of these three components. It may be well structured but too narrow or obvious in its thinking. The thinking might be great, the writing pretty good, but organizationally it might be a disaster.
Since each of these three factors is so important, we want an approach that gives all three their due. No matter which essay you are working on, you must devote time to thinking, organizing, and writing.
You will be given two prompts to consider. Each prompt will give a strongly worded point of view on some subject accessible to all. This means that they won’t ask about Hamlet, but they might talk about education, society, or personal growth. Other topics could include anything from law, society, or trust to art, change, or technology. In fact ETS lists all of their topics on their website, www.ets.org. Go to GRE → Revised General Test → Prepare for the Test → Analytical Writing → Analyze an Issue → Pool of Issue Topics.
Here are some examples of the type of prompts you will see for your Issue essay:
Topic: Most people would agree that buildings represent a valuable record of any society’s past, but controversy arises when old buildings stand on ground that modern planners feel could be better used for modern purposes. In such situations, modern development should be given precedence over the preservation of historic buildings so that contemporary needs can be served.
Instructions: Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement. In developing your point of view, consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations affect your point of view.
Topic: No one can possibly achieve success in the world by conforming to conventional practices and conventional ways of thinking.
Instructions: Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement. In developing your point of view, be sure to consider and address opposing views to your position.
Topic: Students should memorize facts only after they have studied the ideas, trends, and concepts that help explain those facts. Students who have learned only facts have learned very little.
Instructions: Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement. In developing your point of view, consider the effects of implementing a policy based upon the statement and how the effects impact your position.
The essay topics are fairly general in nature. Education, for example, means lots of different things to different people and you could take your essay in a number of different directions. One of the most common mistakes test takers make is to write the essay on the first three examples that come to mind (while sitting in a cubicle at the test center). These examples are not necessarily the best, the most interesting, or even within the writer’s area of expertise. They also tend to be simplistic, similar, and often really obvious.
To avoid this trap, force yourself to spend time thinking. Specifically, use your scratch paper to make a chart. On one side write “I agree” and summarize the prompt. On the other side, write “I disagree” and summarize the opposing argument. Now force yourself to brainstorm four examples for each column. It’s likely that you will have no trouble filling up one column, but you may struggle on the other. Push yourself to complete it. It is when you really push your thinking that your essay gets interesting.
If you run out of ideas during your brainstorm, use this simple checklist. Ask yourself, “How is this true for me, my family, children, the elderly, my school, my community, my employer, my state, my country, my species, nature, science, or history?” By using this checklist to generate examples, you will automatically begin to see the issue from multiple perspectives. This will add richness and depth to your thinking.
Of course, the examples you choose need to be good ones. The best place to start is with things you know. Think about your job, your life, or your major in school. Work from your areas of strength or expertise and the ideas will come more easily and be far more powerful. You might think that the Holocaust or Gandhi’s march to the sea are perfect examples, but if you don’t know much more than the basics about either topic, you run the risk of sounding trite and simplistic. No one wants to sound trite when talking about the Holocaust.
When you come up with a general example, make sure you always attach it to a specific. If the topic is education and your point is that it is necessary so that history does not repeat itself, get specific. Which history, whose education. A general essay is short and average. An essay that rests upon clearly defined examples is longer and far more convincing.
Yes, you can write the essay in the first person. It is your job to have an opinion on the subject and to express it.
Now that you have this great list of ideas and examples, it’s time to craft an essay. At this point, do NOT pick a point of view. Pick your best three examples. The point of view is irrelevant; it is your examples that make your essay powerful. It doesn’t matter if you pick examples from both sides of the agree/disagree divide. If you have examples from both sides, it simply means that you will disagree with the prompt and that your thesis statement will be some variation of: “this is often true but not always.”
Rarely will you see a topic with which you agree wholeheartedly and for which you can’t come up with a few powerful exceptions. In fact, an essay that acknowledges that there are two sides to an issue, and that take time to address some of the opposing points of view, will be far more powerful. Instead of saying, “You are wrong and I disagree,” you are saying, “I understand your point of view; here’s why I think my point of view is better.” Which one gives your argument more authority?
Pick your best three examples. These will be the ones about which you know the most, about which you are the most excited, and which can be linked together in a common thread. You might choose three examples that could sit on either side of the agree/disagree divide depending upon the point of view. You might pick three different scales and show how the topic affects a child, a family, or a country. You might want examples from wildly different fields such as software development, literature, and psychology. If you have brainstormed well, you will have plenty of interesting things from which to choose.
Once you have three good examples, you can craft your thesis statement to accommodate your examples. This way your examples will appear to be perfectly selected to support your thesis. Isn’t it nice to have the perfect examples ready just when you need them? Now, write your thesis statement out on your scratch paper. Another common mistake is for essay writers to lose the thread of their argument halfway through the essay, or to stray from their thesis statements. This happens when you fail to make a plan and stick to it. Most people are actively thinking about what they’re going to write next while they’re already writing! This causes all kinds of errors, oversights, and meandering essays. Don’t do it.
Do not think about what you’re going to write, while you’re already writing. Make a plan before you start, and stick to it.
When you write out your thesis statement, you don’t have to go into detail. You’ve got four more paragraphs with which to do that. Just tell the reader what you intend to prove and give him or her some sense of how you’re going to do it. Your first paragraph will be short, to the point, and no more than three sentences. If your topic is censorship and your examples are spam parental controls on Internet portals, the dominance of a few major corporations in news production, and access to a free press in China, then that is all you need to say in your intro. You have plenty of time to get to specifics in your body paragraphs.
On your scratch paper, write out your thesis statement, your three examples, one or two words here will do, and then a few words to remind yourself why each example is proof of your thesis statement. You don’t need a whole sentence, just a few words such as “children, Internet, some censorship—good” or “children, Internet—children too sheltered, don’t learn to censor selves.”
When you begin to write your essay, these little guidelines will become the topic sentences of each of your supporting paragraphs. They will ensure that your essay stays on track and that the job of each example is clear to the reader.
Now that you have three beautifully chosen examples, a point of view perfectly supported by the examples, an outline, and even your topic sentences, you are ready to write. In fact your essay, at this point, is 80 percent written. All you need to do is flesh out your paragraphs, come up with a conclusion, and you’re done. The great thing about this is that it leaves you free to really focus on your writing.
On the Issue essay, it was your job to craft your own Argument. On the argument essay, your job is the opposite. You will be given someone else’s argument and it is your job to break it down and assess it. In some ways, this is not difficult. The argument you will be given will be filled with some pretty obvious flaws. Here are some examples:
The following appeared in a memorandum from the new president of the Patriot car manufacturing company.
In the past, the body styles of Patriot cars have been old-fashioned, and our cars have not sold as well as have our competitors’ cars. But now, since many regions in this country report rapid increases in the numbers of newly licensed drivers, we should be able to increase our share of the market by selling cars to this growing population. Thus, we should discontinue our oldest models and concentrate instead on manufacturing sporty cars. We can also improve the success of our marketing campaigns by switching our advertising to the Youth Advertising agency, which has successfully promoted the country’s leading soft drink.
Write a response in which you discuss the specific evidence needed to evaluate the strength of the argument and how the evidence would affect the argument.
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The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of Armchair Video, a chain of video rental stores.
Because of declining profits, we must reduce operating expenses at Armchair Video’s ten video rental stores. Raising prices is not a good option, since we are famous for our special bargains. Instead, we should reduce our operating hours. Last month our store in downtown Marston reduced its hours by closing at 6:00 P.M. rather than 9:00 P.M. and reduced its overall inventory by no longer stocking any film released more than two years ago. Since we have received very few customer complaints about these new policies, we should now adopt them at all other Armchair Video stores as our best strategies for improving profits.
Write a response in which you consider possible alternative explanations for facts cited in the argument, and explain how your explanations effect the argument.
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In each city in the region of Treehaven, the majority of the money spent on government-run public school education comes from taxes that each city government collects. The region’s cities differ, however, in the value they place on public education. For example, Parson City typically budgets twice as much money per year as Blue City does for its public schools—even though both cities have about the same number of residents. It seems clear, therefore, that Parson City residents care more about public school education than do Blue City residents.
Write an essay in which you propose a series of questions to ask to further evaluate the argument that has been presented. Explain how the answers to these questions might affect the conclusion of the argument.
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There are three basic parts to any argument. They are:
The Conclusion: The conclusion is the main point of the argument. It is the thing the author is trying to prove. It is the author’s recommendation or action point.
The Premises: If you identify the conclusion and ask, “Why?” the answer you get will be the premises. They are the facts or reasons the author uses to back up his or her conclusion.
Assumptions: You can’t point to the assumptions because they’re not there. The assumptions are the unstated conditions that attach the premise to the conclusion. There are hundreds of these.
When you begin to break down an argument, you will want to use the formal language of arguments. First identify the conclusion of the argument you’ve been given, and then identify the premises and then some of the missing or weaker assumptions.
There are a number of types of arguments that you will see often. Once you identify the type of argument being made, spotting the flaws is easy.
A causal argument assumes a cause-and-effect relationship between two events. Sales are down, for example, because of a change in demographics. To weaken a causal argument, you need only point out some other potential causes for a particular event. Perhaps sales are down because the overall economy is down, or because the product suddenly has competition. To strength a causal argument you need to show that other potential causes are unlikely.
In these arguments one group is assumed to be representative of a whole population. Members of the group that was surveyed all said that they prefer lite beer because it is less filling. To weaken this argument, you need to show that the group surveyed does not represent the whole population. Perhaps they surveyed beer drinkers at a restaurant, where they were also eating diner, rather than beer drinkers at a bar. Perhaps they surveyed at a liquor store right after lunch. To strengthen this argument you need to show that the sample population is, in fact, representative of the whole.
Arguments by analogy claim that what is true for one group is also true for the other. Voters in Cleveland prefer one candidate, therefore voters in Detroit will too. To weaken these arguments you need to show that these two groups are not at all analogous. Perhaps Detroit is the hometown of the rival candidate; perhaps one candidate favors the auto industry and one does not. To strengthen these arguments you must show that the two groups are quite similar indeed.
The overall process for crafting your essay will be the same as it is for the Issue essay. Almost invariably you will end up criticizing the argument you have been given, although it is often a good strategy to use your conclusion to point out ways in which the argument could have been improved. Throughout your essay you want to use the language of arguments. This means naming conclusions as conclusions, sampling arguments as sampling arguments, premises as premises, and assumptions as assumptions.
Begin by identifying your conclusion or conclusions and then the major premises upon which it/they rest. For each premise note the type of reasoning used (sampling, casual, etc.), and the like flaws associated with that type of reasoning. This is as much brainstorming as you will need.
Rank these premises by the size of their flaws. Start with the most egregious and work your way down. The outline of your essay will look something like this:
The author’s conclusion is Z. It is faulty and more research/information is needed before the suggested action is taken.
The first and biggest flaw is premise Y. It’s possible that it is true, but it rests upon the following assumptions. Can we really make these assumptions? What about these alternative assumptions?
Even if we assume Y to be the case, there is premise X. Premise X draws an analogy between these two groups and assumes that they are interchangeable. Can we really make this assumption; what about these alternative assumptions …?
Even if we assume X to be true, there is also W. W is a sampling argument, but the author not only has not proved the sample to be representative, but he/she points out that this might not be the case! Perhaps, as noted, blah, blah, blah.
In conclusion, this argument is incomplete and rests upon too many questionable assumptions. To improve this argument, the author needs to show A, B, and C: before the building is to be torn down, the company is to change tactics, the community is to devote resources, or the school is reorganize its curriculum.
Feel free to have fun with this essay. Reading essays can get pretty boring, and a smart, funny critique of a faulty argument can be a welcome break. You might say, “If I were the president of company X, I would fire my marketing director for wasting my time with such a poorly researched plan,” or “What the marketing director of company X should have done is …” It is okay to have personality as long as you get the Analysis-of-an-Argument job done at the same time.
For a more in-depth look at the techniques for the Argument essay and some sample essays, see Cracking the GRE.
Here are some examples of the types of prompts you will see for your issue essay.
“One should not expect respect for disregarding the opinions of others. Only when every point of view is taken into consideration should people take action in the world.”
“An increased number of laws or rules, ironically leads to a diminished sense of morality and impoverished relations among people.”
“An idea alone, no matter how great, is meaningless unless it is put into practice.”
“The value of ancient works, no matter how great, cannot be accurately judged because modern standards are not relevant and ancient standards cannot be known.”
“When something is judged as ugly or lacking in style, it is only because it is being perceived by someone other than its target audience.”
“Truly innovative ideas tend to come from individuals, because groups tend to work towards consensus and the status quo.”
“It is far more important to define what you are for than what you are against.”
“Education consists of making errors.”
“The unknown is necessary.”
“Skill alone, no matter how great, does not guarantee a masterpiece.”
“To respect a symbol is to contribute power to a cultural institution, to worship a symbol is to bring about its eventual end.”
“Success means a greater ability to communicate one’s essence.”
“A student who wishes to succeed in business should study anything but business while in school, he or she will learn skills of business. However, the value of adding the additional perspectives gained by studying other fields of knowledge is too valuable to pass up.”
“Unexamined conservatism is far more dangerous than reckless change.”
“If a student can return home comfortably, a school has not done its job.”
Here are some examples of the types of prompts you will see for your argument essay.
The following appeared in a memorandum from the regional manager of the Taste of Italy restaurant chain:
“After the first month of service, the new restaurant in the Flatplains Mall, which uses the Chipless brand of wine glasses, has reported a far lower rate of breakage than our other restaurants that use the Elegance brand. Since servers and bartenders at all of our restaurants frequently report that breakage is a result of the type of wineglass, and the customers at the Flatplains Mall restaurant seem to like the Chipless style of glasses, we should switch all of our restaurants to the Chipless brand.”
The following appeared in an internal memo circulated amongst the partners of a small graphic design firm:
“When the economy was growing, there were more graphics jobs than there were designers and many designers could make more money working as independent contractors, than they could as salaried employees. As we too were growing and needed more designers, we were forced to pay higher salaries to recent design graduates than we had paid in the past. Now that the market is shrinking, we can save lots of money by cutting back the salaries of all designers on staff to match current market rates. Service sector companies and manufacturing companies have both been able to successfully cut wages in a down economy without harming production. We should too.”
The following appeared in a report to the board of a company that produces men’s sporting apparel:
“While national television advertising is increasingly expensive, it would cost roughly the same amount to reach the same number of people by buying print advertising space in various magazines. Since launching our newest TV ad campaign, sales have gone up significantly, but not in those markets which are served only by print ads. We should, therefore, increase our investment in TV ads and should not renew our magazine contracts once they are up.”
The following appeared in an internal memo circulated amongst the partners of a small design firm:
“We, the four partners of Max Design, have made the company what it is. When we are hired by a client, it is our taste and style that the client is paying for. In the last two years we have grown significantly and now have project managers handling many of our recent contracts. In my opinion, the work put forth by the teams led by the product managers is not as good as the work put forth when it was just the four of us. At other design firms of a similar size, the principals remain personally involved in all projects. Therefore, from now on, all decisions for all projects, no matter how minute, should be signed off by one of us.”
The following appeared in an email written by the head of market research division to the president of a major candy company:
“In the last four years the gross sales in the candy market have remained static, but ice cream, another confectionary product, has experienced huge increases in gross sales. Specifically, the growth of boutique ice cream brands specializing in unusual savory ice cream flavors such as pink peppercorn, basil, and ginger, has exploded. In response, we have tested some savory flavored candy chews at a number of national gourmet food fairs. The response to our free samples has been extremely enthusiastic. Therefore we should jump to the forefront of this trend and launch our savory candy chews nationally at all retail outlets.”
The following was a memorandum by the campaign manger for a state senate candidate:
“Contributers to nearly every major blog in the state, both democratic and republican, agree that a proposal to increase tolls on the major highways going through our state is a good thing. They don’t all agree that the increased revenue should go towards the same thing Some say we need more technology in the schools, others favor subsidizing insurance for the unemployed and independent contractors, and some say it should just be used to cut income tax. However, they all agree that the tolls should go up. Certainly this will cause more commuters to take public transportation, encourage businesses to ship by rail rather than truck, and save on road maintenance fees. Our chief competitor, who accepts major contributions from the trucking companies, opposes the toll increase. We should, therefore, come out strongly in favor of it.”
The following appeared on the op-ed page of a local newspaper:
“As violent crime rates have slowly inched up in our city, it is time for city officials to take a stand to protect citizens from harm. The first step is to gate and lock downtown parks after dark. Keys can be passed out to apartment owners and other local residents to ensure that they have continued access to these public spaces while protecting against people who are using the park for things other than the recreational activities for which these public spaces were designed. This approach has been taken in three of the five suburbs that surround this city and polls of both homeowners and police departments in all three report higher property values and lower crime rates. The city needs to act now before we reach a tipping point.”