Does MIT have any problem with a longer additional information section. For example, would the admissions committee be “turned off” by an optional information section of 400 words? 500? 600? Of course, I’ll try to keep is as brief as possible to communicate what I want. If the information is helpful, (translation: I think it is important) will the admissions committee read it and consider it fully?
Thanks for any and all responses.
If you were a college adcom assigned to read numerous applications which require you to spend long hours and late nights to get through them, how would you feel towards the applicants who ignore the word limits and make your life harder?
@jpm50 there are no word limits on the additional information section as far as I know (for MIT)
My understanding is that if it fits on the page it’s good.
Of course, if there was an assigned word limit, I wouldn’t be asking the question.
^^ My bad. I thought you were referring to the sections where there is a stated limit.
I’m just an applicant, but I predict an answer from @MITChris would be something along the lines of “Whatever you like. There is no preference.”
@ManaManaWegi My Additional Info section might cross 500 words, and since they haven’t mentioned a word limit, I’m not worrying. Obviously they’d prefer to read something more concise, but if the information is helpful (as it is in our case), I assume they’ll still read it.
As long as the information is helpful and couldn’t be reduced, then it’s perfectly Ok.
My suggestion, though, is to try to make it more concise, by cutting any adjectives, modifiers, and the like, since they make the text thicker and, IMHO, their value is not as great as you think.
@ManaManaWegi okay so I filled in my ~650 words into the additional info section, and there is a word limit.
I wasn’t able to find out the exact word limit, but it told me I exceeded it.
The issue is that (at least in the pdf preview) there’s a set amount of space for each section. If your text crosses that length limit, the font size either gets reduced, or it just gets cut off.
So, experiment!