GMAT Essays (a.k.a. AWA)

Procrastination was obviously not the way to go. This is how I got over my fear for the essays.

I searched online and got a grasp of what the structure of the essays should look like (intro, 2-3 points, conclusion, each point in a paragraph - here is one of the many similar templates online). Also, luckily, we're given the topics beforehand, and I knew that the only way for me to beat the essays was to go through every single topic. There are about 300 topics, so I figured that if I went through 10 topics in details every day, I would need a month to go through them all, and that seemed like an attainable goal.

I started this mission of familiarizing myself with all essay topics right around when I started reading the MGMAT materials. For each topic, I would think of at least 2 to 3 points that I could talk about, together with examples. As I've mentioned before, I work flexible hours (and mostly from home), so it was very convenient that I had quite some time to spend on studying. At the beginning, I would get lazy on some days and do less than 10 topics a day (or skip a day if I had a lot of other stuff to do), but I knew that I didn't want my 30-day schedule to be significantly delayed, and quickly got better at sticking to what I had planned. If I was fairly busy on any day in particular, I would consider doing less studying on other topics, but stuck to the 10-per-day self-imposed essay quota. As time went by, I also became faster at thinking of points to make, as well as more familiar with some of the topics that were foreign to me (issues regarding the arts, etc), and I saw that as an improvement.

I finished outlining all 300 topics in little over a month, and then concentrated on quickly finishing off the rest of the MGMAT syllabus within the next few days.