Try to make the most of the time you have to prepare for the GMAT Analytical Writing Assessment (the two GMAT essay sections). Write practice essays under exam conditions, take notes on a variety of official essay topics, and brainstorm Issue-Analysis ideas by exploiting other resources, including my two GMAT essay books. This page provides details about each strategy.

Practice, Practice and More Practice

You could study many "model" GMAT essays and review every available essay-writing tip, yet still perform poorly on the actual exam. That's because there’s no substitute for putting yourself to the task under simulated exam conditions.

Compose as many practice essays as you reasonably have time for, responding to the official GMAT essay prompts. In so doing:

• Always practice under timed conditions. Unless you're put under the pressure of time, you really won’t be ready for the test.

• Always use a word processor for your practice tests. Be sure to use only the GMAT word processor's limited editing functions.

• Evaluate your practice essays. Practicing isn’t all that helpful if you make the same blunders again and again. After composing an essay, evaluate and score it based on the official criteria. Then reflect on your weaknesses and concentrate on improving in those areas the next time. Don’t worry if you don’t produce perfect models. Concentrate instead on improving your performance next time.

Take Notes on a Variety of Official Issue Topics and Arguments

From the official GMAT website download the current lists of Issue and Argument prompts. Select 10-15 Issue topics covering diverse themes, and any 10-15 Arguments. For each one, spend about 5 minutes brainstorming and making notes. Even if none of the prompts you selected appear on your exam, this exercise will go a long way toward ensuring that you don't find yourself paralyzed, or "stuck," during the actual exam.

Dig Further for Issue-Analysis Ideas

During your exam, the testing system will select your Issue topic randomly from its large pool. What if the testing system deals you an unfamiliar card? Keep in mind that, according to the test makers no special knowledge about any Issue topic is needed to score high on the Issue essay. Keep in mind also that the specific reasons and supporting examples you cite in your Issue essay are only one of several scoring criteria, and they are by no means the most important.

But if you have ample time to prepare for the exam, by all means go the extra mile. Explore periodicals and websites that focus on the same sorts of issues covered in the GMAT pool of Issue topics. Here's a brief list of periodicals that feature articles that cover frequent GMAT Issue themes:

• Inc.: business management, ethics, leadership, entrepreneurship
• Forbes: business management, ethics, leadership, entrepreneurship
• U.S. News and World Report: notable current events
• The Economist: political and economic ideology
• Reason: ideology and culture (loads of cross-discipline articles)
• The New Yorker: arts, humanities, sociology, popular culture
• The Futurist: cultural and technological trends

Don't forget about those notes you took during for your business and economics classes. Dust off those notes; you might be surprised at what you’ll find that you can recycle into a GMAT Issue essay.

Consult my Book of Sample GMAT Essays

My book GMAT—Answers to the Real Essay Questions (published by Peterson's) contains sample essays for more than a hundred GMAT Issue prompts and more than a hundred GMAT Argument prompts. From the list in Part 1 of the book, identify Issue topic themes with which you’re relatively unfamiliar, and then get up to speed by reading the relevant essays in Part 2. As you read:

• Pick up thesis ideas from the first and last paragraphs of each essay.

• Make note of reasons you find clearest, most convincing, or most useful.

• Highlight transition and rhetorical phrases; then, as you compose practice essays, make a special effort to incorporate your favorite phrases so that they become part of your natural writing style.

For the Argument writing task, randomly select from Part 3 as many essays as you reasonably have time to study. For each essay:

• Identify the types of reasoning problems that the essay discusses and that you learned about in Part 1 of the book.

• Highlight transition phrases, which connect the essay's points of critique. Then make a special effort to incorporate similar phrases into your practice essays.

CAVEAT: Don’t try to memorize the book's sample essays. GMAT readers are familiar with the book and will recognize plagiarism when they see it. There’s nothing wrong with borrowing ideas, reasons and transition phrases from the book's sample essays. Do try, however, to include your own specific examples, especially in your Issue essay. And be sure that in both essays you express your ideas in your own words. [Book updates]

Consult my GMAT Writing Skills Workbook

If your analytical-writing skills need significant improvement, further help is available in my book Writing Skills for the GRE-GMAT (also published by Peterson's). The book places special emphasis on building rhetorical writing skills, organizing your two GMAT essays, and avoiding or correcting common language, grammar and mechanical problems.

The book also explores additional (less frequent) reasoning problems with Arguments in the official pool. Finally, to help improve and polish your analytic and writing skills, the book contains a variety of reinforcement exercises for each writing task. [Book updates]