free online gre essay grader

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GRE Essay LiveGrader

You've probably heard about the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) essays on the GRE. They're nothing to fear, but you should know that the way they are graded is different from what you're used to.

The best way to prepare for the GRE essay is to write one and have it graded by an expert, using the same guidelines that are used for the real GRE. GRE Essay LiveGrader sm  helps you to do just that.

LiveGrader   sm  is a tool that we've developed to help you prepare for the GRE. All Princeton Review classroom, online, and tutoring students can submit their GRE essays which will then be graded by one of our GRE experts. Not only will our expert grader score your GRE essays, but he or she will also provide personalized feedback that will help you maximize your score on the AWA portion of the GRE.

Frequently Asked Questions about GRE Essay  LiveGrader sm

How is my gre essay graded.

After you submit your GRE essay, one of our expert graders will score it using the same guidelines that are used for the GRE. Essays will be scored holistically, which means that your GRE essay will be judged as a whole, not just on the basis of particular traits.

Who will grade my GRE essay?

A trained and certified Princeton Review expert grader will grade your GRE essay. Our experienced graders know what makes a strong GRE essay; many have graded thousands of essays.

Do I have to write about a specific topic for my GRE essay?

Yes. The essay "prompts" ask you to write on specific topics; one will ask you to analyze an argument, the other will ask you to analyze an issue. Your GRE essay must address the issues presented in the prompts. GRE essays written on any other topic will receive a score of zero.

How are the GRE essays different from the essays I wrote in school?

Unlike many essays you write in school, you'll only have 30 minutes, and you won't be able to use reference materials. Graders won't be expecting perfection; they will be judging your GRE essay for what it is: a first draft. Furthermore, the person grading your GRE essay will only spend 2–3 minutes evaluating your writing.

When I use  LiveGrader sm , will I receive just a score, or will I get comments too?

Your GRE essay will be given a score ranging from 0–6. LiveGrader will also provide you with personalized feedback. Your report will tell you what worked well on your GRE essay and how you can improve it to earn a higher score on the real GRE AWA.

How do I get my score?

We will e–mail your score and personalized feedback within 3–5 days after you submit your GRE essay. You can also access your score on the website, once it has been posted.

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ScoreItNow! ™ Online Writing Practice Service for the GRE ® General Test

ScoreItNow! ™ Online Writing Practice is designed to help you practice for the Analytical Writing section of the GRE ® General Test administered beginning on September 22, 2023. Using ETS's e-rater ® technology, the automated scoring system provides immediate essay scoring in a confidential, risk-free environment.

This service lets you:

• Respond to GRE Analytical Writing topics created and tested by ETS test authors.
• Submit your responses online and get immediate scores on your responses from ETS's e-rater automated scoring system.
• Review scored sample essay responses on the topics you select.
• Review general suggestions for improving your writing skills.
• Receive diagnostic feedback on your responses.

The fee for the ScoreItNow! Online Writing Practice service is US$20, which entitles you to write essay responses on two GRE Analytical Writing topics and receive an e-rater score for each.

In addition, after you have submitted the two essay responses for scoring, you will have the option to write and submit essay responses on six FREE bonus Analytical Writing topics for more practice. You will receive a score on each essay response that you submit on these bonus topics.

NOTE: Although performance on ScoreItNow! essay topics is not an exact predictor of how you might perform on the GRE Analytical Writing measure during an actual GRE General Test administration, you are encouraged to write the ScoreItNow! essay responses under timed conditions to get a better sense of how you might perform on the actual test.

Using ScoreItNow! Online Writing Practice is easy

• Sign-up to use the service.
• Preview the GRE Analytical Writing task and topics.
• Review the GRE Analytical Writing scoring guides, sample topics and score level descriptions.
• Choose the Practice Option to compose your essay responses offline under untimed conditions, or the Test Experience Option to compose your responses online under timed conditions.
• Submit your essay responses for immediate scoring.

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Purchase the ScoreItNow! Online Writing Practice service for US$20. The service allows you to write and receive scores for two essay responses.

Note: If you have a Voucher Code, create an account to activate.

Learn more about ScoreItNow!

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20+ PROVEN ways to boost your GRE essay score (backed by data!)

Looking for ways to improve your GRE Analytical Writing scores? In this post, we’ll teach you some simple GRE essay tips to give you an edge over the competition – backed by real graded essay data.

There are a lot of opinions out there on what makes a good GRE essay, but we wanted to know for sure. Studying for the GRE is stressful enough, and you deserve to know exactly how to ace every section. So, we paid several GRE instructors to hand score 1,000+ GRE essay examples and determined empirically, without a doubt, the keys to writing the perfect GRE essay.

Using these GRE analytical writing examples, we trained a machine learning model capable of accurately predicting your score and letting you know exactly how you can improve. 

Here are the top 5 keys our model said have the biggest impact on getting a top analytical writing GRE score:

• Total word count
• Total noun count
• Prompt keyword usage
• Total adjectives count

Sentence variety

In this article, we’ll outline the process we took to build the machine learning-backed essay grader and answer the question of how to write a great GRE essay once and for all.

The GRE analytical writing section

The gre essay grader, analyzing the ets gre resources, nlp and key entity extraction, machine learning, gre essay score analysis results, beeswarm plot, waterfall plot, top findings, prompt keywords, adjectives count, spelling error rate, average sentence count, thesis word count, thesis sentence average word count, thesis people count, body paragraph word count, body paragraph quotation count, body paragraph exclamatory sentence count, conclusion word count, conclusion sentence word count, case study: a high-scoring gre issue essay example, case study: a medium-scoring gre argument essay, summary of results: gre essay tips for a great gre analytical writing score.

Essay writing can be a difficult skill to master , and to ace the GRE you’ll need to write two: the argument essay and the issue essay. These essays test your critical thinking and analytical writing skills, your ability to communicate complex ideas, develop logical arguments, and maintain a focused discussion. Although the GRE issue essay and the GRE argument essay follow different GRE essay prompts, the criteria they’re graded on and the way to write these essays are basically the same.

With only 30 minutes to complete each essay, you need to be efficient. But what if you had analytical writing GRE tips that could basically guarantee a high essay score, because they were reverse-engineered using machine learning? It would make getting that perfect 6.0 GRE analytical writing score Achievable 😉

Each GRE analytical writing section consists of a topic of discussion and specific instructions on how to respond. In the allotted 30 minutes, GRE takers must be able to analyze the prompt, plan a relevant response, and write an organized and coherent issue essay or argument essay supported by evidence.

Needless to say, every second counts. To help set up Achievable’s GRE course customers for success, we’ve built a machine learning-based essay grading system trained on thousands of professionally graded GRE essays, using real GRE essay prompts. Let’s dig into how it works and how we learned the most important factors for getting that perfect 6.0 GRE essay score.

The Educational Testing Service (ETS), the creators of the GRE, provide some information on how to score a perfect 6.0 on the essay sections. They mention that writers should “articulate a clear and insightful position”, “develop the position fully”, give “compelling reasons and/or persuasive examples”, and “convey ideas fluently and precisely”. It’s great that ETS is trying to give students some direction on how to get a good GRE essay score, but none of these tips are quantifiable. How do you know if an argument position is “clear and insightful,” or if an example of an issue is persuasive?

We don’t like leaving things to chance or rule-of-thumbs, and in building our GRE essay grader we dug into the details to figure out what issue essay and argument essay characteristics are empirically, data-backed, and without a doubt, the keys to getting the best score on the GRE essay sections.

We hired professional GRE instructors from different firms to hand score our essays, and analyzed the results to determine the key features leading to a high GRE essay score. Using a variety of different technologies, we built a best-in-class GRE essay grading tool that can help take your GRE essay writing skills from a 0 to a 6. We want to share the details of our process so that you can feel confident in using the Achievable platform to pass your exam without breaking a sweat.  

Let’s take a look under the hood.

The first step in building our GRE essay grader was to comb through every resource the ETS had on GRE analytical writing. Since our GRE essay grader is tailor made to help you score high on the GRE writing sections, the information provided by the creator of the test is by far the most valuable. 

We poured through ETS GRE resources, looking for the characteristics that make up a great GRE essay. We did the boring work so you don’t have to, reading through every single line of their GRE issue essay examples, their GRE argument essay examples, and the result was a document almost twenty pages long detailing our findings.  

We looked at everything from the obvious characteristics (also called traits or features ) like word count, to details like the number of adjectives used. Of course, at this point we were making intelligent guesses about what was important. The real judge of what to focus on when writing a GRE essay response would be our machine learning model.

Having twenty pages of notes was a great start but the next step would be the major challenge. We needed a reliable way of extracting these traits from a piece of English writing. Unfortunately for us, computers don’t understand English, which meant we needed to dive into the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). 

NLP is a subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence that is helping to bridge the gap between the language used by humans, and the way computers process information. 

Luckily, we love to learn here at Achievable, and after a whole lot more research we were ready to build software that could take an essay and dissect it into a list of features. This process, called key entity extraction , was fundamental to building our GRE essay grader. Now that we could reliably process GRE essays and get our feature data out the other end, we were almost ready to train our model.

The last step before training was to prepare the extracted data. Machine learning is very good at one thing, and that’s discovering relationships between sets of data – otherwise it’s not as smart as you’d think. Outliers in the dataset can skew the results, especially when the outliers are very large or very small compared to the average. This meant that the data provided to the ML algorithm had to be pre-processed, or normalized .  

Data normalization usually involves rescaling the data such that all values are between 0 and 1. Using the results of our previous analysis, we determined lists of trait values that could be used to normalize the data.  

For example, most GRE issue essay templates and GRE argument essay templates follow  the conventional essay writing advice of using a 5 paragraph essay structure. This GRE essay template format includes a thesis, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Normalizing the paragraph count by 5 would create a trait that the ML algorithm could use to work its magic. If we provided more traits to the model, such as the paragraph count normalized by 3, and also by 10, the model could give us more information, and a high degree of confidence, whether 5 paragraphs is the way to go to get a high score. Following this approach, we normalized our dataset of GRE essays and provided hundreds of traits for the machine learning model to analyze.  

With our key entity extraction software ready to go, and our sample GRE essay data normalized, we were ready to train a machine learning model using the thousands of hand scored, real-world GRE issue essay examples and GRE argument essay examples. 

We built our machine learning model using TensorFlow, and in the training stage, passed huge amounts of data through neural networks resulting in a model that could reliably predict the score of a GRE essay. Using a variety of data science tools we generated charts to help describe the results.  These charts help illustrate how each trait affects the predicted score of an GRE essay. We can see which traits have the most significant effect, and by how much, making it very clear how to write a GRE essay.

The chart shown below is called a beeswarm plot and it represents the combined results of the thousands of GRE essays graded by the machine learning model.  Here’s how to read it:

• Each row in the plot corresponds to a specific feature
• The rows are ordered from top to bottom starting with the feature that had the biggest impact
• Each colored dot in the row represents a single instance of the feature, i.e. the value of the feature for a specific GRE essay
• The dots are colored according to the size of their value, where the lowest values are blue and the highest values are red
• The gray line down the middle is the zero-impact-line, with values falling to the right having a positive impact on the predicted result and the values falling to the left having a negative impact

Now with that explained, here is the beeswarm plot results from our GRE essay research:

For example, we can see from the plot that the total number of words used in the essay had the biggest impact on the score. Because the impact of a feature increases as the distance of the dots from the zero-impact-line increases, the blue dots extending far to the left indicate that low essay word counts have a large negative impact on score. On the other hand, the red dots tend to cluster slightly to the right of the zero-impact-line, indicating that writing a longer essay can help, but the impact is much smaller. The takeaway here is that you should avoid writing too short an essay, rather than trying to write a very long one. 

The chart below is called a force plot and it gives a general idea of how each feature affects the machine learning model’s predicted result for a specific GRE essay.

• The base value (4.339) is the average predicted score across all graded GRE essay examples
• The actual prediction for this essay is shown at f(x) (5.00)
• Each feature has a positive contribution (red) or negative contribution (blue) to the final score

Examining the force plot quickly tells us about the rough impact of each feature and if any stand out. We can see that the weight distribution is fairly gradual, with no single feature having an extraordinary impact. The force plot gives us a good summary of a specific GRE essay scored feature results, but isn’t very actionable. Our next chart, the waterfall plot, gives us a much more detailed explanation.

The chart below is called a waterfall plot and it gives us a more detailed view of how each feature affects the predicted score for a specific GRE essay.

• The starting value E[f(x)] (4.339) is the average predicted score across all graded GRE essay samples
• The features are ordered from top to bottom by the magnitude of their impact, which can be either positive (red) or negative (blue)
• The final value f(x) (4.999) is the predicted score

For this GRE essay, we can see that a low spelling error rate, i.e. having a low number of spelling mistakes, had a significant positive impact on the score (+0.11). On the other hand, a low word count (-0.11) essentially neutralized the positive contribution of the low spelling error rate. Similarly, a good usage of nouns throughout the essay positively contributed (+0.07) to the score, while a low word count for the body paragraphs (-0.07) basically negated this impact.

Our top findings for what you can to do impact your GRE essay score, listed in priority order:

• Higher values for word count have a positive effect on the predicted score while low values have a significant negative effect. 
• Low word counts were more significant in their negative effect on score, so rather than trying to write a long essay, focus on not writing one that is too short. In fact, we can see that high values also had a negative effect for some essays, likely when the essay was long but low in quality. In other words, a short essay will tend to bring down your score .
• A higher value for noun count contributes positively while low values contribute negatively.  
• Since nouns identify a person, place or thing, an essay lacking in nouns would be unfocused and imprecise. It’s hard to score a 6.0 on a GRE essay if no one knows what you’re talking about! So, a low number of nouns contributes significantly to a lower score .  
• Measuring the presence of keywords found in the GRE essay prompt throughout the essay it was clear that an absence of prompt keywords contributed to a lower score .  
• This was especially true for the thesis paragraph, where the goal is to clearly specify your main position on the issue or argument topic. Using keywords from the GRE essay prompt guarantees that your response is focused on the given topic.  
• For the adjectives count we saw only a minor and somewhat ambiguous negative contribution by low values while higher values strongly contributed to a higher score.
• A higher number of adjectives indicates a more descriptive essay. Since being descriptive helps to develop and clarify your response, be sure to use lots of adjectives alongside your nouns.
• Looking at the number of short, long, and very long sentences, and the ratios between these values, we found that long sentences (16 to 49 words) were the optimal choice for sentence length. We also saw that a higher proportion of short sentences to long sentences contributed to a lower score .  
• This suggests that you should prefer more long sentences than short sentences in your writing . However, using solely long sentences can also lower your score, so be sure to include the odd short sentence to establish variety.
• A high spelling error rate contributed to a lower score.
• No surprises here, making spelling mistakes will bring your score down!
• Paragraphs with too few or too many sentences had a slight negative impact on the score.
• A GRE essay paragraph should strike a balance between accurately introducing and supporting a point, without rambling or going off topic. We found the sweet spot to be around 8 sentences per body paragraph and about 5 for the thesis and conclusion paragraphs.
• Thesis paragraphs under 100 words contributed to a lower score.
• The thesis paragraph should be long enough to describe the focus of your response and your main reasons for supporting it.
• Short sentences in the thesis paragraph showed a slight negative contribution.
• It is especially important that the thesis paragraph provides enough context to effectively introduce and focus the essay response.
• The GRE essay grader found a relationship between mentioning a person’s name in the thesis paragraph and a higher score.
• Whether you are repeating a name found in the GRE essay prompt, or trying to provide context, try to reference a person’s name in your thesis paragraph.
• Body paragraphs under 150 words contributed to a lower score.
• The body paragraph is the meat of your GRE essay and should be long enough to introduce a point, provide and analyze evidence, connect to the thesis statement, and transition to the next paragraph.
• Surprisingly, using quotations in body paragraphs contributed to a lower score.
• While quotations may help provide evidence in general essay writing, when writing a GRE essay, focus on concisely responding to the prompt.  
• The use of exclamatory sentences (those ending with an exclamation mark) contributed to a lower score.
• Exclamation marks are generally not used in academic writing. WHY??!?! They just don’t feel that professional!!!
• If you need to emphasize a point make sure you do so with your language.
• A concise conclusion (about 100 words) contributed to a higher GRE essay score.
• A conclusion should wrap up your GRE essay, and not introduce more information. Make sure to focus the conclusion on summarizing the GRE essay topic, the essay’s main points, and making the connection to your thesis clear.
• Conclusions composed of fewer but longer sentences contributed to a higher score.
• Sentence variety doesn’t play a big role when it comes to the conclusion paragraph. Focus on using long sentences to summarize your main points and tie everything together.

The following is an example of a high scoring GRE essay submitted by an Achievable user. Our human GRE instructors, as well as our machine-learning GRE essay grading system, score this as a perfect 6.0.

Here is the GRE issue essay prompt:

And the corresponding GRE essay example:

The names of the greatest rulers, artists, and scientists is what is taught in most history classes. Little attention is given to the common people. Despite the fact that the most prolific and talented members of a society have a profound effect on their nations, it is the common people that truly embody the nation and it is them who keep it running. From the plumber, to the lawyer, to the homeless person; they all contribute their grain of salt to the identity and strength of the nation. The purpose of a nation is to create a just society in which every individual can enjoy the wealth and resources of the nation. A nation without a solid base will never be able to allow artists and scientists to create their most innovative and creative master pieces. Without the combined effort of all its people, there will be no Albert Einstein or Mozart, because there will be no resources to encourage these geniuses to develop their talents to their highest potential. The only way a nation can have a solid base is by guaranteeing the well-being of all its citizens. With happy citizens, nations have the solid foundation needed to produce the greatest achievements humanity can accomplish. Thus, the greatest of all nations are those in which the general well-being of its population is at its highest because happy citizens are more productive, more generous to each other, and more knowledgeable. 

First, citizens living in a society that ensures their well being become much more productive than in a nation in which their well-being is not guaranteed. Dr. Friedman, in Berlin in the year 1975, conducted a controlled random experiment in which he tested the effects that well-being had in the production level of the subjects of the experiment. He created a control group and an experimental group, and assigned members to each group randomly. The experimental group was in a room that was very hot, whereas the control group was in a well ventilated room. Next, both groups were given simple tasks such as cutting squares out of circles and coloring an image. After 30 minutes had passes, Dr. Friedman evaluated who was able to complete most tasks in the 30 minute time window. He noticed that the experimental group completed only 80% of the tasks compared to the control group, which completed 100% of the tasks. As per Dr. Friedman: “the results of this experiment show how well-being has a negative effect on the productivity of individuals”. Less productive individuals are going to achieve less at work, meaning companies in general will be less productive and less competitive in the global market. In an increasingly competitive world, less productive companies will bring less resources to the nation, making it less likely to invest in the talent of its people. 

Second, well-being is directly related to generosity. The more generous citizens of a nation are to each other, the more likely they are to help those in need around them. This, in turn, leads to a collective effort to lift each other up, making the nation more productive and wealthy. Thomas Frank and Imelda Seo developed a randomized experiment in which they tested the relationship between well-being and generosity. The study was conducted in Seoul in 1994 in a public university. The subjects of the test were randomly selected from different levels of the class in an effort to eliminate as many confounding variables as possible. The experimental group was told the very bad news that they had just failed their most recent test. After receiving this news, they were given a limited amount of chocolate and they were told to pick as much as they needed but to think that someone else will come after them and pick what is left from the chocolate. The person that will come later will not know how much chocolate was in the box originally. In contrast, the control group was told the same regarding taking as much chocolate as needed and to be mindful of the person coming behind them, but they were not given the initial bad news that they had failed their test. The results of the experiment show that the experimental group was 70% more likely to take all of the chocolate in the box than the control group. As per Imelda Ser: “this is indicative that when a person’s well-being is jeopardized, they are less likely to be generous.” This study shows how well-being can have a positive impact on the citizens of a nation, and this generosity can lead to citizens helping each other out more and creating a more cohesive and productive society and nation. 

Third, citizens living in a nation in which their well-being is adequate are more knowledgeable. More knowledge can lead to greater discoveries. Great artists, scientists, and rulers all require proper education during their early years to achieve the success. If society as a whole is more educated, it is much more likely for a nation to be able to cultivate the talents of their next genius. For example, Amadeus Mozart was the son of a talented musical father that lived in Vienna, the classical music capital of the world at the time of this life. If Mozart would have been born in an empoverished family with no resources and no knowledge of music, who is to tell Austria would have produced such a notable musical expert. The father of Mozart lived a comfortable life that allowed him to develop his own talents, and later pass his new found knowledge to his son, who later took this knowledge to never before seen levels of musical prowess. To guarantee that the knowledge is passed on to the greatest individuals of a nation, it is necessary to ensure the general well-being of its citizens. Only then will a great nation be able to produce a Mozart, an Albert Einstein, or a Napoleon.

In conclusion, a nation can only be great if it can guarantee the well-being of all its citizenry. This is the only way a nation can ensure that the individual talents of certain prolific people can flourish. These individuals require a strong enough safety net that will allow them to pursue their dreams without having to worry about heating the house or finding the next meal. Also, citizens that are happy and living comfortable can produce more for the nation as a whole, and lift each other out of poverty, thus creating a great nation .

This GRE essay received a perfect score ( f(x) = 5.999 ) and the waterfall plot below describes what features had the biggest impact:

In this case, the feature with the biggest impact was the number of adjectives used . If you read the essay, you probably noticed how descriptive it was. The author provided plenty of detailed examples to support his thesis.  

At 1,083 words, the GRE issue essay was a good length, and this helped boost the score.

The author added excellent context to the thesis paragraph by including the names of two prominent creatives: Albert Einstein and Mozart . These names were relevant to the response and supported the idea that when a nation guards the well-being of its citizens it fosters creativity and innovation.

Using plenty of nouns relevant to the prompt, the author was able to keep the essay focused and coherent. We can also see a good use of long sentences, giving the author the space needed to elaborate on and support the thesis. An overall low spelling error rate contributed positively to the score. Interestingly, we can see that the use of places in the body paragraphs (e.g. Berlin ) helped to boost the score.

The author received a minor penalty for the overuse of verbs in the thesis paragraph as well as a few spelling mistakes throughout the GRE essay. These negative contributions were ultimately insignificant compared to everything else that the author did right, clearly illustrating how focusing on the right characteristics can guarantee you a high scoring GRE essay.

The following is an example of a medium-scoring GRE essay submitted by an Achievable user. Our human GRE instructors, as well as our machine-learning GRE essay grading system, score this as a 3.5 with room for improvement.

Here is the GRE argument essay prompt:

And the corresponding essay:

More information is needed to accurately determine if the recommendation from the regional manager of Hamburger House should be followed. Information detailing the reason for changing to canola oil, the cost of canola oil, the effect canola oil has on the taste of french fries and other foods, if the public was made aware of the switch to canola oil, public’s perception of canola oil, if the customer reviews over the past two months were about the taste of the fries, any operating changes made at the company that could have affected sales, other factors that could have increased sales, Hamburger house expanding their locations and customer base, the effects on net profits are needed. Additional evidence is necessary to evaluate Hamburger House’s internal memo to franchises.

The reason for why Hamburger House switched to canola oil is the first piece of missing information needed. If canola oil was chosen because it is cheaper than vegetable oil, it would be a sensical choice to reduce costs and choose the cheaper oil. If canola oil were the more expensive option, there must be non-cost-related reasons that justify the switch. In either of the aforementioned scenarios, one must examine if the canola oil makes the fries and other foods taste the same, better, or worse. If canola oil makes all foods taste better and has a net positive effect on profits, franchises should follow the recommendation. If canola oil makes some but not all foods taste better, franchises should only use canola oil in foods that taste better and if there will be a net positive effect on profits.

The second piece of information needed to evaluate Hamburger House’s recommendation is the public’s perception of canola oil and vegetable oil and whether the public was made aware of Hamburger House’s switch to canola oil. If canola oil is perceived to be a healthier option or vegetable oil is perceived as an unhealthier option, it can be expected that the public would react positively to Hamburger House’s use of canola oil and increase foot traffic to its locations. However, if the public was not made aware of the switch in oils, information regarding the content of the positive reviews that Hamburger House has received in the past two months and if those positive reviews were all for locations that switched to canola oil are needed. If the reviews mentioned that the foods that contained canola oil tasted better, it would be reasonable for franchises to switch to canola oil to make their food taste better and, thereby, increase sales.

The third piece of information needed is whether Hamburger House expanded its locations and customer base in the past two months. An increase in french fry sales and average unique customers would naturally increase french fry sales.

The most important aspect as a business is the impact that canola oil has on earnings. It is necessary for a business to be financially profitable to survive. Therefore, if the switch to canola oil allows franchises of Hamburger House to be financially viable, franchises should make the switch if doing so if there is a positive effect compared to keeping vegetable oil.

This essay received a low score ( f(x) = 3.503 ) and the waterfall plot below describes what features had the biggest impact:

The feature with the biggest impact for this GRE essay was the total word count (-0.29). At 526 words, this example illustrates how dramatically a short GRE essay can affect the predicted score. In fact, we can see that the argument essay is penalized for low word count in various ways by other features, such as the body paragraph average word counts, total sentence counts, etc. Writing a longer argument essay is a straightforward way to guarantee a higher score and gives you more space to elaborate on and support the position from your GRE essay topic.  

The second feature in the list measures the negative impact (-0.14) of the ratio of short to long sentences in the conclusion. In this case, the author used too many short sentences resulting in a lower score. The conclusion is meant to summarize the essay’s main points and tie them together with the thesis statement, a task that typically requires longer sentences. The conclusion of this argument essay could have been improved by using longer sentences to explain specifically how the thesis and supporting points are connected in addressing the issue laid out in the prompt.

The plot shows a high thesis noun count contributing to a lower score (-0.11). If we examine the thesis we can see the author uses an extremely long sentence that repeats many of the same nouns over and over again (e.g. canola oil). While using nouns is important to keep an essay focused on the topic, the nouns should be both relevant to the GRE essay topic and varied. Simply stuffing nouns into a paragraph will not have the desired effect. This thesis could have been improved by introducing fewer points while elaborating on how each point supports the thesis statement.

While the author did a few things right, it is clear that this GRE argument essay’s low score was majorly due to a low word count, weak use of nouns, poor sentence variety, and an overall lack of focus and specificity. Catching issues like these before the exam can help you improve your writing skills and boost your score by multiple points.

So if you want to improve your GRE analytical writing essay skills, what do you need to do?  

• Make sure your essay is long enough to avoid being penalized for a short essay
• Ensure your essay is focused by using plenty of nouns that relate to the topic
• Write a descriptive essay by using lots of adjectives to describe your position, evidence, and ideas
• Read the prompt carefully, highlight keywords, and use these keywords throughout your essay, most importantly in your thesis paragraph
• Vary your sentence length, but in general favor the use of longer sentences
• Avoid making spelling mistakes
• Aim for 8 sentences per body paragraph and 5 sentences for thesis and conclusion paragraphs
• Keep your thesis and conclusion paragraphs concise but use at least 100 words
• Reference a person’s name in your thesis paragraph if it’s relevant
• Keep your body paragraphs above 150 words
• Avoid the use of exclamation marks and quotations 

Our Achievable GRE course offers hundreds of GRE essay prompts and GRE essay topics for the GRE issue and argument essays, giving you the opportunity to practice your analytical writing skills until you are 100% confident in getting a top GRE essay score. Your work is automatically saved as you write and includes a timer to keep you on track. 

Achievable’s proprietary GRE essay grading system uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze your GRE essay writing and provides instant feedback on exactly what you can do to boost your score. Backed by our vast amount of data from real-world GRE issue essay examples and GRE argument essay examples, we’ve created the smartest GRE essay grader that exists, included with your purchase of Achievable GRE .

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• Table of Contents
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• Detail of the Passage
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• Function of Passage Part
• Cultural Hard Ex. 1
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• Most Strongly Supported
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• Statistical Reasoning
• Weaken Reasoning
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• Consecutive Numbers
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• Analytical Writing Intro
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• Analysis of Issue: Timing
• Dissecting Arguments
• Finding Errors
• Eliminating Fill Sentences
• Qualification
• Start Strong
• Active Voice
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• Colloquialisms
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• Analysis of Argument Questions
• Analysis of Issue Questions
• 10 Most Common Errors
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The concept is elegantly simple: teachers input or copy the students’ essays into the provided text box, select the appropriate grade level and subject, and ClassX’s AI Essay Grader takes it from there. Leveraging the cutting-edge technology of ChatGPT, the AI system meticulously evaluates essays against a predefined rubric. The rubric encompasses various criteria, ranging from content depth and structure to grammar and style, ensuring a comprehensive assessment of the writing.

Teachers can now allocate more time to personalized instruction, classroom engagement, and curriculum development, rather than being bogged down by the time-consuming task of manual essay evaluation. The AI’s rapid and consistent grading also means that students receive prompt feedback on their work, enabling them to learn from their mistakes and improve their writing skills at an accelerated pace.

Moreover, the AI Essay Grader enhances objectivity in grading. By removing potential biases and inconsistencies inherent in manual grading, educators can ensure that every student receives a fair and unbiased evaluation of their work. This contributes to a more equitable educational environment where all students have an equal chance to succeed.

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How to Get Your AWA Practice Essays Graded?

Given the sheer number of students who ask me this question about the GRE Analytical Writing essay, I am surprised that there are so few resources that offer such a service. So what do you do when you’re desperate? Well, here are some of my recommended options to consider.

ETS ScoreItNow!

For $20 dollars, the ETS ScoreItNow! Essay Grader  will grade two of your essays . You also get six bonus topics (three for Analyze an Issue and three for Analyze an Argument) that can be submitted for scoring as well. While I have never used the service myself—nor, for that matter known anyone who has—I’m sure the score is pretty accurate. The only downside is that’s all you get—ETS does not provide any feedback on the essays themselves. Nonetheless, if you feel that you are not improving on the essay, then you should definitely consider the service offered by ETS.

For those who don’t necessarily want to part with their money, or who actually want more than just a score, here are a few other options.

Find a friend

I know, I know, this may seem like a cop out answer. But the truth is that having a second pair of eyes, even untrained, can be really beneficial to finding your flaws. First, you need to have a friend with a pretty strong essay writing skills. Next, you need to ask them nicely, or at least offer them a cup of coffee. You should let them know that you only had 30 minutes to write your essay, and so the GRE people aren’t expecting Pulitzer Prize-winning material.

You should also tell them to pay attention to the following: structure, logical flow of ideas, and persuasiveness of examples. They should not be looking for fancy-sound GRE words. At the same time, your writing should be relatively sophisticated and should vary up the sentence structure so it doesn’t sound choppy.

Compare your work

I have a mock essay on our blog. There are a few essays in our product as well. Many test prep books have mock essays out there. Usually these essays cover the spectrum of grades, from a ‘2’ to a ‘6’. (A ‘0’ is essentially passing out and drooling on the keyboard; or typing away in Swahili).

See which essays your essays are similar to in terms of score. Since mock essays usually have an explanation for their respective scores, you should see if your essay is lacking in similar ways.

The kindness of strangers

Urch.com is a popular GRE forum , which thousands of GRE aspirants visit each day. If you post your essay and ask for some feedback, someone may provide some (I’ve seen this happen before). While this someone may not be an expert, often a second pair of eyes can be helpful.

Other resources

One way to check your writing is to cut and paste the text into a Word doc. Are there many green lines (Word’s only slightly intrusive way of indicating that something may be grammatically awry)? By going into ‘Tools’ on the menu bar, you can get an explanation for what is wrong with your sentence.

Of course such analysis will tell you nothing of structure or logical flow of your ideas. Still, knowing that your grammar and spelling are not up to snuff can help you work to improve your score by as much as a point.

Though getting feedback on your AWA essays may be tough, don’t lose heart. Most likely one (if not more!) of the resources above will pan out. And don’t forget: nothing makes you a better writer than practice, feedback, practice, feedback.

Chris graduated from UCLA with a BA in Psychology and has 20 years of experience in the test prep industry. He’s been quoted as a subject expert in many publications, including US News , GMAC , and Business Because .

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57 responses to “How to Get Your AWA Practice Essays Graded?”

Hi! I’m a customer and bought a premium account, but, unfortunately, your system does not rate paid customers’ essays. You should write about it

As a Premium student, remember that you can always reach out to us at [email protected] with questions or feedback 🙂

I’m not sure I understand what you’d like us to write about. We aren’t able to grade student essays, as we discuss in the FAQs on our plans page , but we provide you with knowledge and resources to be able to write a strong essay and evaluate your own work. Please let me know if I can answer any more questions about this 🙂

https://www.mbacrystalball.com/gre/gre-essay-grader Is this reliable?

wonderful article chris! i came across http://www.awaprofessor.com , and they evaluate AWA essays with both an expert human rater and a computer rater.

have you tried them before? any feedback on them?

Unfortunately, we do not have much experience with this site and it doesn’t seem like we can play around with it to learn too much more.

thanks for the reply magoosh! just to share, i submitted an essay to them and the feedback was really useful for me. there was even a 3-page section teaching me the secrets of official essay graders. Best of all. it took them less than a day to give me the feedback so if you who need your essays rated quickly, this is a great resource!

who exactly did you submit an essay to for this feedback? the service in the blog said they give scores only. Can you please clarify? I really need to improve my essays. thanks!

I believe the student submitted the essay to AWAProfessor. I used their service and found the essay report very beneficial.

I used them and I scored 6.0 for my AWA so I am very happy!

Hi as a GRE premium user can you please let me join the Magoosh GRE page on facebook. Thanks

Just email us at [email protected] and one of our team who has access to the Facebook group will be able to help! 🙂

Can anyone tell me that the ScoreItNow grades for AWA are nearly same as the actual GRE AWA score? Do anyone have any experience with that?

I am a premium user and I have requested to join the MAGOOSH GRE facebook group to find an essay evaluation buddy. I found the group via the link that Rachel has provided. Please accept me in the group. Thanks

Just accepted you!

All best, Jessica

Has anyone tried submitting essays on test big?

I bought cracking the gre (by the princeton review), it comes with 4 online practice exams. They grade your essays and provide general feedback on each. I was also told that Kaplan does the same with theirs as long as you email your essay to [email protected] .

Did you buy just the book and they grade your essays?

There are two different books in Amazon, which one did you buy?

1. Cracking the GRE with 4 Practice Tests 2. Cracking the GRE Premium Edition with 6 Practice Tests

Thanks a lot,

Hi Neil, Hopefully, this is not too late. But, I bought the Premium Edition with 6 practice tests. They had my essays graded and updated the score in my Princeton Review online profile.

Thank you Sudha. Never is too late. I am going to try.

@Dion, do we need to buy any course material for kaplan to grade our essay or is it free, please reply ASAP.

I have one doubt regarding AWA evaluation.

Does Manhattan 6 practice test that we can avail by purchasing one of the strategy guides evaluate our AWA section and give feed-backs?

Unfortunately, Manhattan does not give any feedback/evaluation on AWA. Luckily, you do have some options:

https://magoosh.com/gre/2013/how-to-get-your-awa-practice-essays-graded/

Hopefully, that helps 🙂

I found this tool called findscore ( http://www.findscore.com ) that evaluates AWA. It doesn’t really help in evaluating the structure of my essay. I have been following your blogs on AWA, so i don’t need much help from structure standpoint. I want to know if there are syntax errors in my essays. Is findscore reliable?.

I played around with Findscore a little just now—but not enough so I myself can give a reliable estimate of its value. It seems good. I basically wrote a pretty terrible ‘3’ level essay, and it gave me a ‘3’.

My only reservation is that the prompts are not taken from ETS. I only wrote on one prompt but it didn’t seem to be up to standard. That said, I’ll have to experiment with it a little more. But thanks for letting me know of this service 🙂

I doubt its credibility. I wrote an average argument task and obtained a score of 5. I had timed myself and could only write 305 words in the time frame. It had this interesting feature though , it gives a count of the organization phrases . I my case it was : Organization phrases count: 8 finally… final… perhaps… maybe… so that… however… but… even if…

I wonder how grades are impacted by the Organization phrases ?

I used the ScoreItNow feature and found no matter what I did, I got the same score … consistently. On test day I produced a lower scored essay. That being said, I really still don’t know what is required other than an introduction, content paragraphs containing examples, and a conclusion. Honestly, I probably could have made the essay longer, but I’m used to being concise, accurate and clear. I only gave 2 examples, so maybe that’s another issue.

Interestingly, I found a few people who reported that after requesting a rescore, they actually went down in score, whereas as one did go up a whole point. Most people generally kept their original score. I wish they would at least tell you what writing points you missed.

BTW, my verbal was 163 (91%), while my AW was 3.5 (34%). I have always had As in all my writing classes, so I should at least be average.

That’s the thing with ScoreitNow–you don’t receive any feedback on how to improve your writing, or at least make it more consistent with what the graders expect. Based on what you say, I’m guessing the essay was a little on the short side. Also, some students tend just to include vague examples without really showing how they relate to the thesis . Most of these essays are also too one-sided; the GRE rewards those essays that are able to take a position somewhere in the middle, and to articulate why they’ve taken such a position.

Have you checked out the other AWA posts on the Magoosh blog? They give you a better sense of what the graders are looking for. Manhattan GRE also gives a detailed breakdown of the essay.

And I’ve seen students go from the 3.5 range to 5.0. Given your strong verbal ability, I’m guessing you’ll fall into this group.

Best of luck!

I used the ScoreItNow service yesterday for a practice exam.

It’s actually pretty useful- it highlights all problem areas in your essay (runons, missing commas, transitions), as measured by their magic algorithms.

Plus you get an additional Analytical/argument areas graded for free, after you complete your first set, so 2 sets in total

That does sound helpful! At least from a syntax standpoint students will get a lot of help. Still, in terms of the structure of the essay, the validity and presentation of the examples/logic, it doesn’t look like ScoreItNow can help that much. Or maybe they are working on such an algorithm.

Hi, the web site http://www.gmatawa.com claims to do free evaluation of the essay, and interestingly, it throws up the score instantly once the essay is pasted. Is this web site reliable?

So I played around with the site a little, trying to figure out their algorithm. Don’t know how accurately it mirrors the GMAT’s own algorithm, but it seemed pretty easy to get top marks just by using the usual transitional words, paragraph formatting, and semi-complex sentence structure.

One area where the grader didn’t like me was in the “coherency” department. Apparently, I scored only 2 out of 5. As someone who sees all levels of coherence in student’s writing–from about 2 all the way up to 5–I don’t think my writing merits such a low score for “coherency” (I don’t think anyone would read my blog posts otherwise :)). Basically, the algorithm just isn’t that accurate–so I’d take its ratings with a grain of salt. Also, the site has a spell-checker, which I think is a little suspect :).

Hi everyone,i found one essay grader,Fatema ,she helps in essay grading and writing. This is her link on fb. https://www.facebook.com/FatemahnCompany/posts/563127833746357

Hmm…I’m not sure if she specifically targets GRE. It looks like she is a generalist–which isn’t a bad thing. However, without seeing any of her work, I can’t really recommend her.

If anyone has used her services and has something good to say, let me know :)!

Thanks for your reply 🙂 i understand ,but is there a difference between grading or editing GRE essay from other writings!i mean even if it is a bit different ,it will be easier even for a generalist to grade our essays,thats what i think leme know.

Anyways i checked her profile on elance https://www.elance.com/s/fatemahmirza/job-history/?t=1 seems like people like her work ,maybe that link will give you some insights on her abilities.

Umm…somewhat. I think there are some quirks to the GRE essay that an editor would have to be familiar with to give an accurate assessment of your essay and to help you improve. It sounds like she is a stellar editor. Just make sure she is familiar with the GRE essay format. Good luck :)!

hi Margarette,

How about twitter? 🙁 I dont have a facebook account.

Hi, Adesewa

Unfortunately, for Twitter we only have the GRE account: http://twitter.com/magooshgre , which isn’t really the same as the Magoosh student Facebook group :(. I’d recommend having some friends or family members read over your essays if you want a second set of eyes checking them!

Best, Margarette

Hi, I’d like to join the Magoosh group in Facebook . Thank you 🙂

Sure! 🙂 Same thing as Suryateja, just shoot an e-mail to [email protected] with your Magoosh username and we can send you the link.

Hello,I have sent a request to that group.Did not know about the existence of the group till now ! Would really appreciate it if you would accept my request.Thank you !

Hi Bidisha,

If you have sent a request, you should get a response soon! I expect after the weekend. 🙂

Hi Margarette

Even I am a premium user .I would love to partner for essay evaluation and grading. Can you please send me an invite for the group?

Thanks in advance 🙂 Suryateja

Hi, Suryateja

Sure! Can you email [email protected] with your username? I’ll send you the link once I can confirm you’re in our system. Thanks! 🙂

Chris, Thanks a lot for your invaluable suggestion in getting the feedback after writing an AWA essay. I have gone through your previous blogs which are on writing essay for an issue prompt and argument prompt. They are very helpful. I found your video lessons on the same as very practical and many tips from these lessons can be put to practice.

After reading the current blog, i thought of why not look for a GRE PREP friend among the blog readers who is eager to partner with me in doing a complementary review of the essays we write and provide feedback in accordance with the evaluation criteria published from ETS. I plan to appear the test in coming 2 months. Thanks

That’s a great idea! 🙂 I also noticed you’re a Premium Magoosh member– we have a Facebook group for our Premium GRE members that I just e-mailed you an invitation to. I’d recommend posting there as well to see if any other Magoosh students would be interested in partnering up for essay grading.

Even I am a premium user .I would love to partner for essay evaluation and grading. Can you please send me an invite for the group? 🙂

Thanks in advance Nishtha

Hi, Nishtha

Sure, just sent you an e-mail! 🙂

Hi I am a premium member and would also like the link if possible. Thanks in advance

You can find the link in the comments below. 🙂

Best, Rachel

Can you please send me an invite for AWA premum group?

Hi, Neha! If you’re a Magoosh GRE Premium student, you can email us at [email protected] and request the link to the private Magoosh GRE student FB group, where you can post about your essays. I hope that helps! 🙂

There is a Facebook group for premium members?

Hi, Courtney

Yep! I just sent you an e-mail with the link :).

I am a premium member and would also like the link if possible. Thanks in advance!

Hi Michelle,

You can request to join the group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/303992149648322/ . 🙂

Hello Margarette,

Can you please send me a invite to that group ?

I am a premium user. 🙂

Hey Siddharth! You can request to join the group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/303992149648322/ . 🙂

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Gre prep online guides and tips, how is the gre essay scored.

Your GRE Writing score is a kind of cyborg measurement that averages together both human and machine ratings and melds them into an Analytical Writing score on a scale of 0-6. But how does a human grade the essay? Is the computer grader trustworthy?

In this article, we’ll explain the details of the GRE essay scoring process and the rubrics used by the human graders to derive your two essay scores.

Feature image credit: Seems Legit – panel 3 of 6 /used under CC BY-SA 4.0 /Cropped and resized from original.

GRE Writing Scores: A Roadmap

The GRE essay scoring process is a little complicated because it involves both human and computer graders . Each essay (analyze an issue and analyze an argument) is first graded by a trained human grader on a scale of 1-6. The scale used for essay scoring is holistic, which means you won’t automatically get points off after a certain number of errors. Instead, you’ll be graded on the overall quality of your essays.

Your essay is next sent through the e-rater , which is described on the GRE website as “a computerized program developed by ETS that is capable of identifying essay features related to writing proficiency.” The e-rater program likely grades essays on quantifiable metrics like level of vocabulary difficulty, sentence structure, length of essay (word count and number of paragraphs), and so on. Because it’s pretty difficult to write a program that can judge an essay based on content, it’s possible you could fool the e-rater with a long off-topic essay that uses high-level vocabulary.

But that’s where the human essay graders come in. If the human and computer graders “closely agree,” then the average of their two scores is the score you receive for that essay task. However, if the two scores do not “closely agree, ” then a second human is brought in to grade and the final score is the average of the two human-assigned scores . So if you tried to sneak an off-topic essay by the e-rater, it would be caught by the human grader and a second human grader would be brought in. Even if the human grader scored your essay way higher than the e-rater, you’d still end up with two human graders.

After both of your essays have been scored by e-rater and human grader(s), your overall GRE Writing score is then calculated. To get this number, your scores on the Issue and Argument task are averaged together to give you a final Analytical Writing score on a scale of 0-6 (with 0.5 increments). For instance, if you got a 4/6 on the Issues essay but a 5/6 on the Argument essay, your total GRE Analytical Writing score would be 4.5.

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GRE Essay Scoring: Issue Task

The Analyze an Issue task on GRE Writing asks test takers to read a statement about an issue, take a position, and develop and support that position with evidence and reasoning. For your essay to score highly, you’ll need a clear thesis statement presenting your point of view and multiple examples that back up your claims . How well you accomplish this task dictates how well you’ll do on the Issue essay.

Fortunately, ETS is very up front about what specific benchmarks Issue essays need to meet to reach each score level. Below, I’ve listed the descriptions for 6-, 4-, and 2-scoring Issue essays.

As the above table shows, the holistic GRE Writing score is arrived at by assessing an essay’s quality across many different dimensions: analysis, ideas, development, support, organization, vocabulary & sentence structure. The guiding principle that is used to differentiate between different score levels across all areas, however, is precision .

The more precise you are in formulating an opinion on the issue, in developing and supporting your thinking, in organizing your thinking, and in choosing your words to convey your thinking, the better GRE Writing score you’ll get.

GRE Essay Scoring: Argument Task

The GRE argumentative essay task requires test takers to read an argument and analyze it. The specifics of how this analysis should be done varies from task to task (read more about the eight different kinds of argumentative essay prompts in this article ), but basically you’ll have to evaluate the position or recommendation put forward and decide whether or not it’s reasonable .

Below are the different characteristics of essays scoring a 6, 4, or 2 on the Argument task . As you go through, you may notice some similarities between it and the rubric for the Issue task.

Again, as with the Issue task, the main dimension that separates different score points for the GRE Argument task is level of precision . Instead of being judged on precision in formulating an opinion on an issue, your essay will be judged on precision in analyzing and explaining your analysis of the given argument. Similar to the Issues essay, however, high-scoring Argument essays will still need to demonstrate precision in ideas, development, support, organization, and vocabulary.

How Are GRE Writing Scores Evaluated by Grad Schools?

Now that you understand how the GRE essay scoring works, the question becomes how much grad schools care about GRE Writing scores. The near-unanimous answer, based on the number of schools and programs I researched, seems to be a resounding “not much.”

If schools really want applicants to have specific test scores, they’ll list GRE Writing score cutoffs on their websites (more about what a good GRE Writing score is here ). For the most part, though, as long as you get a 4.0 or above, you’ll be fine, even for the most competitive programs. Find out more about how your GRE score plays into graduate school admissions here .

What’s Next?

Want to learn more about how scoring works on the GRE? Try our complete guide to GRE scoring . If you took the old GRE, you can follow our instructions to learn how to convert your old GRE score to its equivalent new GRE score .

Hoping for more essay-specific scoring advice? We tell you how to get a perfect six on the Issue and Argument essays here .

Need some quick tips to boost your GRE Writing score? Then you should be sure to read our collection of the best strategies and tips to improve your score here .

Ready to improve your GRE score by 7 points?

Author: Laura Staffaroni

Laura graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a BA in Music and Psychology, and earned a Master's degree in Composition from the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She scored 99 percentile scores on the SAT and GRE and loves advising students on how to excel and fulfill their college and grad school dreams. View all posts by Laura Staffaroni

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How to cite ChatGPT

Use discount code STYLEBLOG15 for 15% off APA Style print products with free shipping in the United States.

We, the APA Style team, are not robots. We can all pass a CAPTCHA test , and we know our roles in a Turing test . And, like so many nonrobot human beings this year, we’ve spent a fair amount of time reading, learning, and thinking about issues related to large language models, artificial intelligence (AI), AI-generated text, and specifically ChatGPT . We’ve also been gathering opinions and feedback about the use and citation of ChatGPT. Thank you to everyone who has contributed and shared ideas, opinions, research, and feedback.

In this post, I discuss situations where students and researchers use ChatGPT to create text and to facilitate their research, not to write the full text of their paper or manuscript. We know instructors have differing opinions about how or even whether students should use ChatGPT, and we’ll be continuing to collect feedback about instructor and student questions. As always, defer to instructor guidelines when writing student papers. For more about guidelines and policies about student and author use of ChatGPT, see the last section of this post.

Quoting or reproducing the text created by ChatGPT in your paper

If you’ve used ChatGPT or other AI tools in your research, describe how you used the tool in your Method section or in a comparable section of your paper. For literature reviews or other types of essays or response or reaction papers, you might describe how you used the tool in your introduction. In your text, provide the prompt you used and then any portion of the relevant text that was generated in response.

Unfortunately, the results of a ChatGPT “chat” are not retrievable by other readers, and although nonretrievable data or quotations in APA Style papers are usually cited as personal communications , with ChatGPT-generated text there is no person communicating. Quoting ChatGPT’s text from a chat session is therefore more like sharing an algorithm’s output; thus, credit the author of the algorithm with a reference list entry and the corresponding in-text citation.

When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

You may also put the full text of long responses from ChatGPT in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated. It is particularly important to document the exact text created because ChatGPT will generate a unique response in each chat session, even if given the same prompt. If you create appendices or supplemental materials, remember that each should be called out at least once in the body of your APA Style paper.

When given a follow-up prompt of “What is a more accurate representation?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that “different brain regions work together to support various cognitive processes” and “the functional specialization of different regions can change in response to experience and environmental factors” (OpenAI, 2023; see Appendix A for the full transcript).

Creating a reference to ChatGPT or other AI models and software

The in-text citations and references above are adapted from the reference template for software in Section 10.10 of the Publication Manual (American Psychological Association, 2020, Chapter 10). Although here we focus on ChatGPT, because these guidelines are based on the software template, they can be adapted to note the use of other large language models (e.g., Bard), algorithms, and similar software.

The reference and in-text citations for ChatGPT are formatted as follows:

• Parenthetical citation: (OpenAI, 2023)
• Narrative citation: OpenAI (2023)

Let’s break that reference down and look at the four elements (author, date, title, and source):

Author: The author of the model is OpenAI.

Date: The date is the year of the version you used. Following the template in Section 10.10, you need to include only the year, not the exact date. The version number provides the specific date information a reader might need.

Title: The name of the model is “ChatGPT,” so that serves as the title and is italicized in your reference, as shown in the template. Although OpenAI labels unique iterations (i.e., ChatGPT-3, ChatGPT-4), they are using “ChatGPT” as the general name of the model, with updates identified with version numbers.

The version number is included after the title in parentheses. The format for the version number in ChatGPT references includes the date because that is how OpenAI is labeling the versions. Different large language models or software might use different version numbering; use the version number in the format the author or publisher provides, which may be a numbering system (e.g., Version 2.0) or other methods.

Bracketed text is used in references for additional descriptions when they are needed to help a reader understand what’s being cited. References for a number of common sources, such as journal articles and books, do not include bracketed descriptions, but things outside of the typical peer-reviewed system often do. In the case of a reference for ChatGPT, provide the descriptor “Large language model” in square brackets. OpenAI describes ChatGPT-4 as a “large multimodal model,” so that description may be provided instead if you are using ChatGPT-4. Later versions and software or models from other companies may need different descriptions, based on how the publishers describe the model. The goal of the bracketed text is to briefly describe the kind of model to your reader.

Source: When the publisher name and the author name are the same, do not repeat the publisher name in the source element of the reference, and move directly to the URL. This is the case for ChatGPT. The URL for ChatGPT is https://chat.openai.com/chat . For other models or products for which you may create a reference, use the URL that links as directly as possible to the source (i.e., the page where you can access the model, not the publisher’s homepage).

Other questions about citing ChatGPT

You may have noticed the confidence with which ChatGPT described the ideas of brain lateralization and how the brain operates, without citing any sources. I asked for a list of sources to support those claims and ChatGPT provided five references—four of which I was able to find online. The fifth does not seem to be a real article; the digital object identifier given for that reference belongs to a different article, and I was not able to find any article with the authors, date, title, and source details that ChatGPT provided. Authors using ChatGPT or similar AI tools for research should consider making this scrutiny of the primary sources a standard process. If the sources are real, accurate, and relevant, it may be better to read those original sources to learn from that research and paraphrase or quote from those articles, as applicable, than to use the model’s interpretation of them.

We’ve also received a number of other questions about ChatGPT. Should students be allowed to use it? What guidelines should instructors create for students using AI? Does using AI-generated text constitute plagiarism? Should authors who use ChatGPT credit ChatGPT or OpenAI in their byline? What are the copyright implications ?

On these questions, researchers, editors, instructors, and others are actively debating and creating parameters and guidelines. Many of you have sent us feedback, and we encourage you to continue to do so in the comments below. We will also study the policies and procedures being established by instructors, publishers, and academic institutions, with a goal of creating guidelines that reflect the many real-world applications of AI-generated text.

For questions about manuscript byline credit, plagiarism, and related ChatGPT and AI topics, the APA Style team is seeking the recommendations of APA Journals editors. APA Style guidelines based on those recommendations will be posted on this blog and on the APA Style site later this year.

Update: APA Journals has published policies on the use of generative AI in scholarly materials .

We, the APA Style team humans, appreciate your patience as we navigate these unique challenges and new ways of thinking about how authors, researchers, and students learn, write, and work with new technologies.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

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