shorttheworld wrote:
so for the essays, specifically the 'name a time you had someone accept an idea', how anal do you think adcom will be on the 3 year rule? if you keep the other essays within 3 years and you have ONE that leaks out to ~4 or 5 years do you think thats horrible and theyll slam you? i think its a great response and would rather do a great response that violates the 3 year rule a bit than put a crap response. also, to build off that, do you think tis better to connect it to something more recent to make that 3 year violation less harsh or do you think it should just focus on that ONE event and not violate two things in the question?
It's probably a judgment call. They probably aren't going to be sleuthing your application to pinpoint exactly when something happened; unless it's blatantly an example from long ago, or unless you specifically state '4 years ago, i was facing a situation...' then they're probably not going to give it much thought.
My take on it is they implemented the 3 year rule to avoid 'this one time in high school' stories. As long as your story is relevant and within a reasonable time-frame, you might be ok.
Or, maybe they have a strict cutoff of 3 years; might be a risk.