About This Project
I'm studying the analytical writing section on the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE). For this exam, you are given 30 minutes to write an essay. The essay is scored on a 0 to 6 scale in half-point increments. The exam writers do not publish a rubric, but I hypothesize that word count correlates highly with scores. I will build a dataset of scored essays and conduct a statistical analysis to determine correlations.
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Join The DiscussionWhat is the context of this research?
The ETS has an automated e-grader that scores essays, but it is proprietary and no one knows how it works. Human tutors have different scoring standards which they are largely unable to quantify, but by analyzing scored essays across multiple graders, we should be able to uncover trends in the data to generate a quantitative rubric, even if only used as a guide.
What is the significance of this project?
With approximately half a million people taking the GRE each year, it is difficult to get a top percentile score. The rubric for the analytical writing section of the GRE is incredibly value. By reverse engineering parts of the rubric, we will learn to write essays that are likely to score higher.
What are the goals of the project?
We will undercover correlations between quantifiable essay metrics and resulting scores.
Budget
Independently graded essay data is necessary for analysis. A standard quote from a GRE tutor to score an essay, giving no qualitative feedback, is $5 per essay. I would like to get at least 400 essays scored, split between two different tutors, to have enough data to make statistically significant calculations. Experiment.com charges an 8% fee plus 3-5% for payment processing which comes out to about $300.
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Project Timeline
I have already solicited quotes from tutors interested in conducting the essay scoring. They will need approximately a month to score the essays, and I will need another month to conduct the analysis.
Jan 13, 2023
Project Launched
Jan 27, 2023
200 essays graded by Tutor B
Jan 27, 2023
200 essays graded by Tutor A
Feb 24, 2023
Finish statistical analysis
Meet the Team
Justin Pincar
Justin is the co-founder of Achievable exam preparation, a company that uses adaptive learning techniques to power a GRE prep course and an SIE exam prep course.
Lab Notes
Nothing posted yet.
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