Analyze an IssueWork & leadership

The most effective leaders are those who are willing to admit their mistakes publicly.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning. In developing and supporting your position, consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true, and explain how those considerations shape your view.

Write your response

Give yourself 30 minutes, then get an instant estimate against the official rubric.

Issue prompt

Your essay0 words

An expert estimate against the official rubric, not an official ETS score. ETS scores with a human reader plus the e-rater engine.

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How to approach it

A reliable structure for any Issue prompt.

1Take a clear position in the first paragraph. The reader should know exactly where you stand on the issue before the body begins.
2Develop two or three reasons, each with a specific example. Depth beats a long list of thin points.
3Answer the strongest counter-argument. Engaging the other side is what separates a 5 from a 4.
4Leave two minutes to proofread. A few clean sentences at the end lift the language score.

For the full 0–6 band descriptors and what each score means, see the AWA grader guide.

This prompt

How to approach this prompt.

The word "most" invites a counterexample hunt: are there effective leaders who rarely admit error publicly? Argue that admitting mistakes is one important trait among several, and that its value depends on context, timing, and whether it is paired with a credible fix.

Both sides

Points for and against.

A strong essay does not just pick a side. Weigh the best case each way, then explain which considerations shape your own view.

In support

A leader who owns errors builds trust and models accountability, encouraging their team to surface problems early rather than hide them.
Admitting a mistake enables correction; a leader who cannot acknowledge error repeats it and blocks the organization from learning.

Against, or complicating

"Most effective" is a strong claim, and some highly effective leaders succeed through vision or decisiveness while rarely airing errors publicly.
Public admission can be destabilizing at the wrong moment, and constant self-criticism can erode the confidence a team needs, so judgment about timing matters more than willingness alone.

Evidence

Examples you could use.

Specific, relevant examples are what readers reward most. Here are concrete cases you could adapt for this exact statement. Use them as reasoning, not as facts to recite.

1A CEO who publicly owns a product recall and rebuilds customer trust by doing so.
2A blameless post-mortem culture in engineering, where surfacing mistakes without punishment improves reliability.
3A crisis leader who projects steady confidence in public while correcting course internally.

Watch out

A common trap on this prompt.

Praising honesty in the abstract without testing "most effective." Willingness to admit error is valuable, but a strong essay asks whether it is truly the defining trait of the best leaders or one virtue that must be balanced against others.

Questions

GRE essay questions, answered.

There is no required word count. High-scoring Analyze an Issue essays are typically well-developed across four to six paragraphs, roughly 400 to 600 words, but a reader rewards depth of reasoning and specific support, not raw length. A tight, fully developed 450-word essay outscores a padded 700-word one.

The GRE Analytical Writing task is scored holistically from 0 to 6 in half-point steps against the official ETS descriptors. The reported score averages one trained human reader and the e-rater engine; if they disagree by more than a point, a second human reader adjudicates. It is reported separately from the 260 to 340 Verbal and Quant total.

No. This is an original prompt written in the official Analyze an Issue style so you can practise freely. The real ETS pool is published on the ETS website. Practising on same-style prompts builds the exact skills the scored task rewards, since every Issue prompt uses the same task instructions and the same rubric.

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