{"id":4882,"date":"2011-02-22T10:00:25","date_gmt":"2011-02-22T16:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/?p=4882"},"modified":"2011-02-28T12:11:54","modified_gmt":"2011-02-28T18:11:54","slug":"mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/","title":{"rendered":"Mission Admission: I Have a 700 GMAT Score, but My AWA&#8230;Don&#8217;t Even Ask!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>You have taken a course, studied hard and finally \u201cnailed\u201d the GMAT.  However, you soon learn that your score on the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA), the essay portion of the GMAT, is\u00a0low. Should you panic?<\/p>\n<p>In short, the answer is &#8230; no! Although we have always encouraged candidates to do the best they can on the AWA, the truth of the matter is that  we have never been told by an admissions officer&#8212;nor, as far as we know, has a candidate ever  been told in a feedback session&#8212;that the AWA score was a factor in a school&#8217;s admit\/reject decision. Generally, the AWA is not used\u00a0to  evaluate\u00a0candidates, but to detect fraud.<\/p>\n<p>If, hypothetically, you had <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">tremendous<\/span> difficulty expressing  yourself via the AWA essays, but wrote like a Pulitzer Prize&#8211;winning  writer in your application essays, the school would get suspicious and  begin to compare the two. Not to worry&#8212;the schools are not punitive  and are not acting as fraud squads. Your AWA essays are expected to be unpolished, so no one will seek out your file if you did your best in both areas. However, if an\u00a0enormous discrepancy arises between the two, the AWA serves\u00a0a purpose.<\/p>\n<p>So, if you did well on the GMAT and have a low AWA score, that is a shame, but it is not going to be <em>the<\/em> difference in the school&#8217;s decision about your candidacy. Rest easy&#8230;.as long as you wrote both!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday. You have taken a course, studied hard and finally \u201cnailed\u201d the GMAT. However, you soon learn that your score on the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA), the essay portion of the GMAT, is\u00a0low. Should you panic? In short, the answer &hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/\">Read&nbsp;More&nbsp;&nbsp;<i class=\"fal fa-sm fa-angle-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mission-admission"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Mission Admission: I Have a 700 GMAT Score, but My AWA...Don&#039;t Even Ask! | mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mission Admission: I Have a 700 GMAT Score, but My AWA...Don&#039;t Even Ask! | mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday. You have taken a course, studied hard and finally \u201cnailed\u201d the GMAT. However, you soon learn that your score on the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA), the essay portion of the GMAT, is\u00a0low. Should you panic? In short, the answer &hellip; Read&nbsp;More&nbsp;&nbsp;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-02-22T16:00:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-02-28T18:11:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/mbam-yoast-fallback-image.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeremy Shinewald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jeremy Shinewald\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Mission Admission: I Have a 700 GMAT Score, but My AWA...Don't Even Ask! | mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Mission Admission: I Have a 700 GMAT Score, but My AWA...Don't Even Ask! | mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting","og_description":"Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday. You have taken a course, studied hard and finally \u201cnailed\u201d the GMAT. However, you soon learn that your score on the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA), the essay portion of the GMAT, is\u00a0low. Should you panic? In short, the answer &hellip; Read&nbsp;More&nbsp;&nbsp;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/","og_site_name":"mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting","article_published_time":"2011-02-22T16:00:25+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-02-28T18:11:54+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1200,"height":675,"url":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/mbam-yoast-fallback-image.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Jeremy Shinewald","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Jeremy Shinewald","Est. reading time":"1 minute"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":["Article","BlogPosting"],"@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/"},"author":{"name":"Jeremy Shinewald","@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/74216774a1761e746e2426c9c8171f5f"},"headline":"Mission Admission: I Have a 700 GMAT Score, but My AWA&#8230;Don&#8217;t Even Ask!","datePublished":"2011-02-22T16:00:25+00:00","dateModified":"2011-02-28T18:11:54+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/"},"wordCount":277,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/#organization"},"articleSection":["Mission Admission"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/","url":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/","name":"Mission Admission: I Have a 700 GMAT Score, but My AWA...Don't Even Ask! | mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-02-22T16:00:25+00:00","dateModified":"2011-02-28T18:11:54+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mission-admission-i-have-a-700-gmat-score-but-my-awa-dont-even-ask\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Mission Admission: I Have a 700 GMAT Score, but My AWA&#8230;Don&#8217;t Even Ask!"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/","name":"mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting","description":"World&#039;s Leading MBA Admissions Consulting Firm","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/#organization","name":"mbaMission","url":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/mbam-yoast-organization-logo.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/mbam-yoast-organization-logo.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"mbaMission"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"}},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/74216774a1761e746e2426c9c8171f5f","name":"Jeremy Shinewald","description":"In addition to being Founder and President of mbaMission, Jeremy Shinewald is a Darden MBA, published author, and the recipient of Poets&amp;Quants\u2019 Lifetime Achievement Award in MBA Admissions Consulting. 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