Kindly provide feedback, with an estimated score, on the Argument and Issue topics

In most professions and academic fields, imagination is more important than knowledge.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim.

My response:

The statement makes an observation that in majority of professions and academic fields, imagination is more important than knowledge. This statement is inaccurate due the inherent generalization and lack of details about various key aspects, which are discussed in the following paragraphs.

Firstly, there is no clarity on which type of professions and academic fields are being to referred to here, based on which this conclusion has been reached. There are several professions and academic fields, where knowledge is more important than imagination. For instance, professionals such as civil engineers, laboratory pathologists, chemical engineers,mathematicians, astronomers, numerologists, astrologists and tarot card readers, to name a few, succeed in their chosen line of profession based on their knowledge and numbers of years of hard work and perseverance they put into gaining expertise of a specific area. Hence, details on the type of professions are needed.

Secondly, the methodology and number of subjects studied to arrive at this conclusion has also not been specified. For instance, how many professionals were observed as part of a study, if it was conducted at all? Were 10 participants studied? If just 10, then it’s a very small and inadequate sample to base this conclusion on. Even if is based after studying thousands of people, there is no clarity on were these subjects from the same profession? Or were more than 50% of the sample from the same profession or different professions? If all participants were from the same academic field, then the study is unreliable and the conclusion incorrect.

Thirdly, the statement does not give accurate details on the yardstick on the basis of which it has been concluded that imagination is more important than knowledge. Does this conclusion take into account the amount of money made by people who used their imagination and not knowledge? If yes, then this statement is accurate to some extent if we take the success of J.K.Rowling, the famous author of the critically acclaimed and world’s largest selling children’s books - the Harry Potter series-as an example. Or the world famous author pf detective fiction. Jefferey Archer. However, the statement is untrue if we look at the success of several Tech company CEOs, who reached their current position and amassed the wealth based on their knowledge. Prominent amongst these personalities are Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. By taking wealth as the yardstick, we get very contradictory sides to the conclusion. Or is the yardstick based on the amount of political and societal power people get who used their imagination more than their knowledge? This result area is also inaccurate, since many U.S. presidents had a lot of other qualities, in addition to imagination and knowledge, that helped them reach that position. Based on these points, this statement is rendered false.

Hence, the statement is lacking in a lot of areas, such as the type of profession being observed, the sample size used to reach this conclusion and a clear, conclusive basis on which success is measured, which could lead to the conclusion that imagination is more important than knowledge.

1 Like

Hi, thanks for reaching out!

I would score this essay a 4.5. It’s a reasonable essay, but it misses some of the main grading criteria for the GRE.

Things you did well:

  • Followed the 5-paragraph structure.
  • Used keywords from the prompt.
  • Used clear transition statements.
  • Gave specific examples.

Things you can improve:

  • Write more overall! This is likely the most impactful thing you can do to boost your score.
  • Write more in each paragraph. Your thesis and conclusion are extremely short; your conclusion is only a single sentence.
  • Summarize the main points of your essay in both your thesis and conclusion.
  • Split extremely long sentences into multiple shorter sentences
  • Don’t use so many questions. It’s better to explain the situation, your supporting evidence, and how the lack of evidence would impact the claim.
  • Be careful with your punctuation. There are several places where you’re missing spaces; this will cause the e-grader to detect errors and likely draw the human grader’s attention.

I hope this helps! It’s a good start, and by getting more practice by writing more essays, I’m sure you’ll be able to score at least a 5.0 on test day.