Low awa

[slr87]

I'm planning on applying to psychology Ph.D programs this fall. I just took the gre and scored a 700 on the verbal, 720 on the quantitative, but only got a 4 on the analytical writing section. I always did well in writing courses during college, so I'm surprised how low my AWA score was. I'm wondering how much this will hurt my chances and if I should considered re-taking?

[fuzzylogician]

I'm planning on applying to psychology Ph.D programs this fall. I just took the gre and scored a 700 on the verbal, 720 on the quantitative, but only got a 4 on the analytical writing section. I always did well in writing courses during college, so I'm surprised how low my AWA score was. I'm wondering how much this will hurt my chances and if I should considered re-taking?

Look, no one can promise that a low AWA score won't hurt your application at all, but the general wisdom is that it's the single least important component of the entire application packet. You have a high GRE verbal score; you'll have an SOP and a writing sample to demonstrate your writing skills directly; you could have one or more of your LOR writers talk about your writing in their letter, and if you're international you'll have a TOEFL writing score as well. Each of these components is a better testimony of your writing than the GRE writing score. My advice is not to worry about it, and concentrate your efforts on making the other parts of your application shine.

Also, there are numerous other threads on this forum about low AWA scores which you can find using the search function. Here are just a few of them:

Edited July 17, 2011 by fuzzylogician