MIT Short Response Word Length

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>Hello everyone! Just a worried undergraduate applicant here with a question that hopefully someone can answer. My response for the last question (Major Challenge-How I overcame it) is 298 words. I know it's about 48 words over the suggested limit and it's approximately 20 words over the message that says I've surpassed the limit. However I save it anyways and I see that it looks perfectly fine in the pdf preview. Even if I do edit it, I doubt I might be able to edit much, I really poured out my emotions into this response and my heart cringes for every word I erase. I want to know if it would hurt me if I decided to submit the 298 word response. </p>

<p>TL;DR: Will my application be hurt if I submit a 298 word response and if I do need to erase a bit, what length should I keep it under?</p>

2

<p>Just change things like “on account” to “because.” Look at your sentence structure. That’ll get you far.</p>

3

<p>Thanks for the response! Hopefully that will reduce it by around 10 or more. But I was wondering if I should delete an entire sentence or phrase just to get it to around 270.</p>

4

<p>Definitely get your words down to at least 275. Don’t trust that it looks fine when you save. If it is too long it will NOT validate. Be careful! You want to make sure that your essay fits before you run out of time. Don’t worry, you can do it!</p>

5

<p>Oh, I didn’t realize that. Thank you for your response!! I’ll do my best :slight_smile: and good luck to all the other applicants!</p>

6

<p>Yeah, what rothstem said. You won’t be able to submit unless you can get that message to go away, I made the same mistake but didn’t find out until the last second.</p>