kosyura wrote:
Hello everyone,
I’m in the process of finishing my application essays and have a big question about the word limits. Rotman gives 500 max. for the ‘background’ essay and then 250 each for the ‘talents’, ‘failure’ and ‘goals’ essays, other schools are similar in their length limits.
I find that I ‘overshoot’ the length by about 20% - my short essays are around 300 words each and the big one is even worse – it’s almost 200 words longer than required. This is all after editing it a million times and getting rid of all the qualifiers, simplifying sentence structures, etc.
How strict are schools usually in terms of observing the word limits. What is worse – cut out an important part of the essay or risk angering the admission guys because it’s too long?
Will be really grateful for the feedback!
hala
Our rule of thumb is no more than 10% over the word limit. The adcom members don't sit there and count words, but they can certainly recognize when someone has really gone over the limit. And 200 words or 40% is much too much. I think you need to cut, especially from the long essay.
You might get away with it on the shorter ones.
Good luck!
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