<p>I know that the application for class of 2010 isn't out yet, but I have a few questions to ask. Is it required to write ONE LONG ESSAY and TWO SHORT ESSAYS or ONE LONG ESSAY and THREE SHORT ESSAYS? What are the essay questions? Are they same or different every year?</p>
<p>I'm not sure if they change every year. I do remember that there were a number of choices and you were asked to choose three -- one 500 words, the other two 250 words. </p>
<p>The essays I chose were "Tell us about a person who has affected your life in a," "Tell us about yourself in such a way that we will have a good sense of who you are," and "What talent, accomplishment, or pursuit has given you the greatest joy or satisfaction?"</p>
<p>There was also a 250 word prompt on how you spent your essays.</p>
<p>how you spent your essays? what does this mean, precisely?</p>
<p>LoL... he means how you spent your summers</p>
<p>ahhhhhhhhh, okay lol.</p>
<p>did people really have to stick to the 250 words. or is there like a +/- 50 or so word thing.</p>
<p>I did mean summers. :P</p>
<p>I filled it out online and most of my essays were +/- 5 words to the limit. I don't think the text box had a defined limit. I would strongly recommend staying close to it though.</p>
<p>I know a lot of people went over it by a decent margin. I stayed pretty close, though my 250 word essays were slightly over and my 500 word essay was slightly under. Try to stay close... +/-50 words is fine.</p>
<p>Pretty much if you have something interesting to say it doesn't matter. Mine were within a hundred words of the limit but a friend of mine wrote (if I remember correctly) a 900 word essay and was also accepted. Don't let the word count stifle you but don't give them a dissertation either.</p>
<p>Yeah, I agree. Most of the time, you'll find out that you can cut out sentences that you like for one reason or another but really actually don't add anything (this is painful) and cut away at the word count...but on the other hand, if you are REALLY convinced that your topic cannot be handled well unless you go a lot over the word limit, and other people agree with you, I'd leave it.</p>
<p>I think a good rule of thumb (if you're not sure) would be not to go over 600 on the 500 essay, and not to go over 300 on the 250 essays.</p>
<p>For us, they gave us 5 prompts to choose from, one of them was open-ended (topic of your choice). You had to choose 3, answer one of them 500, and the other two 250. Also, there was a separate short essay on how you've spent your summers (although most people did this really straight-forwardly, you didn't have to be particularly creative). For engineers, there was another short essay on why you're interested in studying engineering.</p>