When the GMAT released its shortened “Focus Edition” of the GMAT in 2023, the AWA (Analytical Writing Assessment) had been removed from the test, presumably because business schools indicated that they did not value the essay portion of the exam. Indeed, for many, many years the essay was virtually meaningless, more of a “pass/fail” measure than anything else. In other words, you didn’t want to post a 0 or 1 (out of 6), but getting a 6 was probably no more advantageous to one’s application than getting a 5.
Well, it’s never a dull moment in the world of business school and grad school admissions! Soon after the release of the shortened GMAT, HBS announced that it would require a GMAT essay and that anyone who took the “Focus edition” of the GMAT and who receives an interview would be required to submit a score from the GMAC Business Writing Assessment (BWA), which was released in September 2024 (after being promised to be released in July). Other schools seem to be following suit: MIT announced that it “may” require the BWA from applicants who are invited to interview. This is an ever-changing landscape, so check directly with schools to see what their policies are. And you can visit GMAC’s Business Writing Assessment Main Page for general information about the assessment. We have additional, more specific links below.
How to Prepare for the Business Writing Assessment
So, how to prepare for the BWA? Well, the first thing is not to stress this! The BWA follows the exact same format and scoring as the old AWA, and it was pretty easy to prepare for and get a top score on the AWA! Most of our students did just a few hours of prep and received 6’s, the top score. And at the time of this writing, you only need to worry about the BWA if you are invited to interview at schools that require it. Could you take it early, even before you are invited to interview, just in case you get a low score and need to retake? Yes, but again, getting a high score is not that difficult. And it’s likely that Business Writing Assessment, just like the AWA before it, will be treated like a pass/fail measure: business schools want to make sure you have some idea how to write, so they don’t want to see a 1 or 2 on the BWA, but it seems unlikely that a 6 will be any more meaningful than a 5.
What we’d recommend is to read the information below, practice on a couple of topics, and that’s it. All of the potential topics are actually published on GMAC’s website, so you can choose directly from that list of official topics. And once you’ve written a sample essay or two and feel confident that you understand and can remember how to structure it, you probably don’t need to write full essays for practice: you can just read a few more topics, brainstorm the main flaws and counter-examples that you would write about, and picture how you would lay them out in the essay. That’s all!
If you do want to practice writing the essay and are comfortable parting with $30, you can actually purchase the Business Writing Assessment Official Practice and write 4 sample essays for 4 separate prompts. You almost certainly do not need this, but it’s available if you are interested!
On to the specific strategies for how to tackle the BWA…
The Business Writing Assessment: Brainstorming
Your job in the BWA is to critique an argument. It is A LOT like Critical Reasoning on the Verbal section of the GMAT, so if you are adept at that, you will find the BWA pretty easy.
First, let’s look at a sample topic and the directions that accompany it:
The following appeared in the editorial of a local newspaper:
“In the first four years that Montoya has served as mayor of the city of San Perdito, the population has decreased and the unemployment rate has increased. Two businesses have closed for each new business that has opened. Under Varro, who served as mayor for four years before Montoya, the employment rate and the population increased. Clearly, the residents of San Perdito would be best served if they voted Montoya out of office and reelected Varro.”
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion.
You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The first piece of advice is that you should NOT just immediately start to write. Break down the argument and brainstorm what your main ideas will be (these should essentially be the main flaws of the argument). You should spend a few minutes doing this before writing! Below are some strategies and common flaws to look for:
Breaking Down the Topic/Argument
- Start by identifying the conclusion
- Then identify the key pieces of evidence that are being used to support that conclusion
- Consider why the evidence, even if it were true, would not necessarily lead to the conclusion. These “gaps” or “jumps” are essentially the assumptions or flaws in the argument that your essay will be centered around
- Sometimes the key here is to look for differences between the evidence and conclusion
- Ex: Crime occurring at night has increased in our town. Therefore, implementing a curfew will decrease the rate of violent crime. (“Crime” is not exactly the same thing as “violent crime.”)
- Finally, think about “counter-examples” for each flaw
- Ex: Perhaps most or even all violent crime happens during the day. Or perhaps the curfew will not work!
Common Flaws/Assumptions:
- A causes B
- Ex: Unemployment increased during mayor X’s time in office. Therefore, it is the mayor’s fault.
- Group A is similar or comparable to Group B
- Ex: In neighboring town X, the central business district is thriving. If we build a central business district in our town, it will thrive too.
- Past or present performance will predict future performance
- Ex: Our advertising campaign led to increased sales last year. Therefore, a new advertising campaign will lead to a similar sales increase this year.
- Ambiguity/Poorly defined terms
- Ex: The people of our town would be best served by…. (What does “best served” mean?)
The Business Writing Assessment: Organizing
Once you have identified the evidence and conclusion and brainstormed the main flaws and counter-examples, you just need to understand how you will lay it all out in the essay. It might be helpful to think about the 3 parts of the essay (intro, body, and conclusion) and how each part will serve a certain purpose:
- Introduction: show that you understand the argument (what’s the evidence, what’s the conclusion, and what are the general flaws in the argument?)
- Body: show what is wrong with the argument (detail 3 specific flaws in the argument)
- Conclusion: show how you would strengthen the argument (discuss what would address the flaws that you mentioned in the body)
And then below is how we’d recommend structuring the essay. The BWA really lends itself to a very predictable structure. The below outline would work for almost any essay. And once you’ve done the brainstorming, the writing can happen pretty effortlessly, because you are just dropping your ideas into the below structure. The only thing we haven’t mentioned is the “strengtheners,” but those follow logically from the flaws and do not need to be brainstormed in advance. This will become clear in the sample essay that we provide at the end of the article.
Suggested Outline/Structure:
- Intro
- State the evidence used to support the argument (The argument cites as evidence…)
- State your thesis (However, the argument is flawed because of x and is therefore unconvincing)
- State the conclusion of the argument (The argument concludes…)
- Body (3 paragraphs…repeat the below for each body paragraph)
- Start by introducing the flaw in general terms (First of all, the argument assumes…)
- Give a hypothetical counter-example (It’s possible that….; Perhaps…)
- Optional – Finish with a concluding sentence that wraps up the point of that paragraph (Therefore, it’s impossible to know if x actually caused y…)
- Conclusion
- Restate your thesis using slightly different wording (Clearly, then, the argument fails…)
- Show how the argument could be strengthened
- Strengthener for flaw 1 (In order to strengthen the argument we would need some confirmation that…)
- Strengthener for flaw 2 (Additionally, we would need proof that…)
- Strengthener for flaw 3 (Finally, we would need further evidence to support…)
- Clincher! (Without this additional information…)
The Business Writing Assessment: Writing
Once you have your main flaws and counter-examples and an understanding of how to structure everything, the essay almost writes itself! Have a look at a sample essay, written in response to the above topic. To save you from having to scroll back up, we’ll repeat the topic below:
The following appeared in the editorial of a local newspaper:
“In the first four years that Montoya has served as mayor of the city of San Perdito, the population has decreased and the unemployment rate has increased. Two businesses have closed for each new business that has opened. Under Varro, who served as mayor for four years before Montoya, the employment rate and the population increased. Clearly, the residents of San Perdito would be best served if they voted Montoya out of office and reelected Varro.”
And now the sample essay…
The argument concludes that the people of San Perdito would be best served by reelecting Varro and removing Montoya from office. It bases this conclusion on the fact that under Montoya unemployment has increased and population decreased, whereas under Varro the reverse was true. It also cites as evidence the fact that two businesses have closed for every one that has opened since Montoya has been Mayor. Nevertheless, this argument relies on several dubious assumptions and is therefore unconvincing.
First of all, the argument erroneously assumes that the unemployment rate and change in population are the only two factors that need to be considered when judging what would “best serve” the people of San Perdito. Even if these factors have negatively affected the city, it is possible that a number of other important indicators show that Montoya has brought positive changes to the city. For example, maybe pollution has decreased, roads have become better, the city has become safer, average per capita income has increased, and people are generally happier, despite the increase in unemployment and decrease in population. In fact, it seems that a decrease in population need not be considered a negative effect at all, and that it might even be considered favorable by the people of San Perdito. Perhaps the city was overcrowded before Montoya took office and is now a more comfortable place to live thanks to the exodus of some of the population.
Furthermore, even if it is true that the drop in population and increase in unemployment are in fact undesirable from the point of view of the people of San Perdito, the argument wrongfully assumes that Mayor Montoya was the cause. Perhaps the nation slipped into a depression soon after Montoya entered office and unemployment is higher throughout the country. For that matter, it is entirely possible that although unemployment is higher in San Perdito since Montoya became Mayor, the increase is actually small compared with the increase in unemployment throughout the rest of the country. It is therefore impossible to conclude not only that the increase in unemployment was caused by Montoya, but also that said increase is even a negative consequence of Montoya’s tenure in office when compared with the situation in the rest of the country.
Finally, the argument unjustifiably assumes that Varro will rectify the situation for the people of San Perdito. Even if we concede that higher unemployment and lower population are undesirable consequences of Montoya’s reign in office, and even if Varro was responsible for keeping unemployment down and population up, there is nothing to guarantee that Varro will be able to achieve the same results the second time in office. Perhaps, for example, his success was the result of a particularly good finance minister who is no longer available, having been snatched up and employed by the mayor of a neighboring town. Or perhaps Varro was young, idealistic, and cared about the people of San Perdito during his first 4 years in office but has now been corrupted by power and would not be as good a Mayor the second time around.
Therefore, the conclusion that the people of San Perdito should vote Montoya out of office and reelect Varro is untenable. In order to strengthen this argument, we would need to know more about what factors would best serve the people of San Perdito; a consideration of population and unemployment is not adequate. Secondly, we would need more evidence to support the claim that Montoya was the cause of the increase in unemployment, the decrease in population, and whatever else can be said to be negatively affecting the people of San Perdito. Finally, we would need some proof that Varro’s future performance as Mayor will be as successful as his previous one. Without these additional pieces of evidence, it would be impossible to accept the conclusion stated in this argument.
Final Thoughts
That’s it! Notice how the structure of the essay aligns with the outline we provided above. Again, once you have the main flaws and counter-examples, you just have to “drop” them into the template.
If you’re thinking that this essay is very long, you are right. Your essay does NOT need to be this long. We went a little crazy with some of the counter-examples, but your essay could be much more concise and still be just as good. Maybe better!
To repeat, DO NOT stress the BWA. Brainstorm a few topics, write a sample essay or two, and you should be ready to ace the assessment!