Admissions Tip: Word Limits and Character Counts
MBA candidates naturally have a good deal of information they want—and need—to convey in their materials, and getting the important ideas down under restrictive word counts is a difficult task. While it might be tempting to run a bit beyond the guidelines to slip in that one extra thought, it’s important to keep the reasons for these limits in mind.
Essay Word Limits
In addition to being a medium for explaining your goals and sharing your story, the essays and short answers also serve as a test of the applicant’s ability to communicate clearly and concisely, not to mention follow directions and answer a question. Because business schools and post-MBA employers place a premium on all of these elements, adhering to word and character counts ultimately works to the candidate’s advantage.
Another important consideration is the reader’s time. Because of high application volume and the need to give every applicant fair and thorough consideration, schools are forced to limit the amount of information in each file. If you consistently extend your answers beyond the suggested limits, you are essentially asking the reader to give you more time than they are devoting to the other applicants. In other words, if you were to ignore the limits and overshoot by 30 percent throughout, this might imply that you consider yourself to be 30 percent more interesting than everyone else who applied – which could create concerns for your own lack of self-awareness.
That being said, there can be some leeway. For the vast majority of programs, it’s generally acceptable to exceed the word limit by 5 percent. There are, of course, a few exceptions:
- Caveat #1: If a school gives you a range (e.g., 250-750 words), you should ideally stay within that range.
- Caveat #2: If a school gives you a page limit (e.g., 2 pages), you should stay within that limit – without excessive margin manipulation or font size reduction.
- Caveat #3: In the rare case that a school’s application system truncates the answer once the limit is exceeded, then it is absolutely important to remain under the limit.
In terms of the other end of the length issue, it is unwise to consistently fall more than 5 percent below the limits; this is valuable room in which to share further relevant information about your candidacy. By falling short, it might signal a lack of effort on your part for developing your best application, or a lack of experiences or accomplishments for you to share with the admissions committee. There is one exception to this, the schools’ optional essays. While some of these essays include word count limits, brevity is typically the rule when choosing to include additional information; the word limit should not be the target.
Beyond the long-form essays that most schools require, many programs also include what are commonly referred to as ‘short answer’ questions in their application data forms. These range from schools asking candidates to describe their post-MBA career plans in a sentence or two to broader queries about how a candidate first learned of a given MBA program. In these ‘short answers’ schools often use character limits instead of word count, and their online systems often truncate responses that run long. As such, we advise a more strict adherence to the word count or character limits associated with ‘short answers’
Best of luck to all those fine tuning their applications!
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
The MBA Application: Know Your Audience
As Round 1 deadlines approach, applicants are coming to understand that applying to business school is an incredibly demanding process. In addition to taking the GMAT, assembling academic transcripts and providing recommendation letters, candidates are required to draft multiple essays, job descriptions, lists of activities and more.
With the obvious incentive to save time wherever possible, it’s understandable that many applicants simply cut and paste content from an existing résumé and write about their work in the manner that comes most naturally. However, in doing so, countless candidates each year assemble their materials without ever asking a fundamental question.
Who will read my MBA application?
While the answer to this question may vary from school to school, one thing is certain: It is unlikely that the person reading your MBA application will have an intimate level of familiarity with your specific industry or job function. This being the case, if you use industry-specific jargon or assume prior knowledge of your field on the part of the admissions officer, you will undoubtedly lose your reader.
It’s also important to keep the big picture in mind; many applicants become so mired in the details of their own work and role that they fail to provide sufficient context for an outsider to understand the impact of one’s efforts to the department or organization as a whole. Write about your experiences in a way that the average person will understand. While this is easier said than done, it underlines the importance of sharing your materials with an unbiased adviser (ideally not a work colleague or family member) to make sure that you aren’t off-base with some of your assumptions.
For some extra resources on how to perfect your application, read up on the Clear Admit Essay Topic Analyses for each school, read interviews with members admissions committees, and visit the Clear Admit shop for the informative Clear Admit School Guides. The School Guides offer in-depth, side-by-side comparisons of your target schools and their peer programs. The Clear Admit Strategy Guides and Interview Guides provide added insight into all aspects of the admissions process.
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
Foster School Offers Tips for their TMMBA Admissions Essay
Writing an admissions essay is never easy. And it can be especially daunting for students applying to unique MBA programs such as the Technology Management MBA program at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. That’s why executive director Tracy Gojdics decided to share some of her top tips on how to approach this portion of your admissions essay.
Gojdics provided her advice in a short video on the Foster School website. In the video, she reminds students that the essay is a chance for self-reflection and an opportunity for the Admissions team to get to know you better. She also offered the following tips.
