MIT optional essay help

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

Just a couple questions on the optional essay if someone can shed some light.

  1. If I want to extend one of the questions, for example lets say the community one, to more than the 250 words, can I put the rest of the essay in the optional section
  2. Should we put a why MIT section in there?

Thank you for all the help!

2

I don’t think it’s really good form to do that for your 5 main essays. I know they explicitly suggest doing it for the Cultural background (100 words) essay in part 1 they let you expand in the extra info. I would recommend staying under the word limit for the community essay and the rest of the 5.
I used my optional box to explain something on my transcript and to add some achievements that didn’t fit elsewhere.

I can’t really say much about the Why MIT one, but pretty much put that in number 2. What field you’re going into is very relevant to why you want to do that field at MIT, so talk about specific programs or classes or professors or labs or whatever.