littlemikey4

I wrote a few of my essays and after giving them a word count I found that I have a 100 word limit one that contains 109 words and a 250 word limit one that contains 286 words, does anyone know if the word limits are strict or how strict?

Mikalye

Don't worrry.

You can check the official MIT blogs for this as this is definitely a FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION. Here are some of the official answers:

For example:
Question: "It took me 25 words extra on the long essay to say what i needed to say. Bad? Good? Indifferent? These have got to be the most stressful 25 words of my life. :P"

Ben Jones (then MIT Admissions Office) Answered: Definitely not a problem. We don't actually count the words, so if your essay is a little bit over the limit, no one will notice. If it's significantly over the limit, however, it will be fairly easy to tell.

Question: "What about 800ish words... ack, i have no idea what to cut!"

Ben Jones Answered: "You should definitely try to stick to the word limit (going a bit over is okay, but 1000 words would not be). If your current topic is really giving you trouble, I'd advise you to cut all but your favorite paragraph and build an entirely new essay out of it.

When I wrote my own college essay, I had the same problem - I was writing about a day in my life, and it was way too long, and a very helpful teacher chose one particular 2-minute moment and said "write your whole essay about this moment - forget the rest of the day." It worked beautifully."

molliebatmit

My personal rule is that 10-20% over or under the limit isn't noticeable.

littlemikey4

thanks a lot, very helpful

vip747

thanks a lot man
very helpful
1 internet for you

Djokovic

the text gets smalelr as you put mroe words. haha, you'll kinda know when you've got too much