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• 3 layer neural networks outperform other ML algorithms in automated assessments. • In subjective assignments, deep neural networks can improve score prediction. • Word embeddings and linguistic feature results in more precise text mining models. • Extraction and selection of appropriate features can improve results. Machine learning (ML) has recently gained popularity in a variety of domains for automating tasks. This has also been used in the evaluation of student responses/ assignments. This paper presents a qualitatively enhanced methodology for automated score prediction of subjective assignments. To consider all the major aspects of a human grader, 21 linguistic features related to syntactical, grammatical, sentimental, and readability are analyzed from the assignments. This study makes use of the ASAP competition dataset from Kaggle. The evaluation metric used is Quadratic Weighted Kappa (QWK), which measures the agreement between the human graded score and the predicted score. The effect of appropriate feature selection has been observed using Mutual Information Regression. Four ML algorithms are investigated on identified linguistic features. 3 Layer Neural Network with feature selection performed well among all chosen ML algorithms with average QWK of 0.678. To include the benefits of deep learning, a new hybrid model (LF-BiLSTM-att-FS) is proposed that combines a higher level deep neural network (DNN) with the selected features. Pre-trained Glove embedding is used to include contextual information of the text. The proposed model results demonstrated an improvement in overall accuracy, with an average QWK value of 0.768. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]