<p>So in the "additional information" section of MIT's supplement, I put lines between paragraphs but in the preview all the blank lines disappeared and also there is no way I could indent any paragraph. I e-mail MIT admission a week ago but haven't get any replies yet.</p>
<p>Somebody let Chris know about that issue in the FAQ thread, and he said he’s looking into it. </p>
<p>If you need to submit something for which formatting is crucial, it might be best to send it on paper via postal mail.</p>
<p>@hypsmc, For what it’s worth, my son had the same problem with several of his college applications. It bothered him at first. He checked with admissions at the first college – a state university, and they said it didn’t matter – that they realized the essays came out that way, even when applicants were trying to indent, enter appropriate spacing, etc. He checked with the second college – a local private college, and they said that even though it looks that way to him, when they actually download it and view it themselves, the material will look the way he intended it to look. He said that he later found that lots of his on-line applications did the same thing – dumped the formatting that he attempted. He’s not worried about it. If you think about it, everybody’s application will look the same way to admissions – they’ll all have the same formatting issues, whatever those issues happen to be. And besides, it seems to me, what’s the big deal about proper paragraph indentations anyway? The meat of the essay is its content – not its formatting. Of course, molliebatmit and the others are the experts, but that’s the way my son looked at it. He ignored the issue and hit “submit!” :)</p>
<p>^I totally agree, of course – I think there are very few instances in which formatting is truly crucial.</p>