<p>For the “why Columbia” and “why Engineering” questions (for those of you who plan to apply to the Fu Foundation), how do you manage to limit yourselves to 600 characters? I’m having a hard time saying anything within these limits… As I want my ideas to prevail, should I cut on any extra useless words or does it still have to be well written?
This might seem like a stupid question, but as a French, I am used to giving tremendous importance to the presentation of my ideas (sometimes over the ideas themselves, go figure) and I am a little confused by these limitations.
Thanks!</p>
<p>Limit yourself to one idea and dedicate yourself to it.</p>
<p>verbosity punishes you on the essay, several ideas can actually be explained in that space, but more importantly several personality traits can be surfaced through your essay by the way in which you express your thoughts, so you need to find ways to both paint an extraordinary picture and use little paint. i think it will be difficult for you to do that if english is not your first language, so i would recommend having your essay pruned and polished by a native speaker. really, to be impactful, and bring out the most detail with least annoyance for the admissions committee, any and all redundant words and phrases should be cut, and the shorter you can explain your ideas the better.</p>