Professional Documents
Culture Documents
learning teams ensures that these sentences have a sincere and personal feelshowing that the candidate truly
understands what the school is about, and resulting in a compelling personal statement that will catch the attention of
the admissions committee.
Limits
Candidates often worry about exceeding schools' requested word limits, even by a mere word or two. Although we
certainly feel that staying within the stated limits is best and advise candidates to do so, we also believe that
admissions directors are rational individuals and are not unnecessarily punitive; we doubt any admissions director
would ever say, "We think this candidate will be the next great CEO, but he exceeded the limit by 20 words, so we
don't want him." Basically, we recommend that candidates not exceed word limits by more than 5%, but we also
suggest that applicants use good judgment and try to avoid consistently exceeding the limit on every essay.
Although we invite candidates to be judicious with regard to word limits, we feel differently about page limits. We
insist that our candidates stay within established page limits, because the admissions committee can clearly tell when
an applicant has exceeded them. Adding an additional page, even for just an extra sentence or two, sends a clear
message to the admissions committee that you are disregarding the rulessomething you obviously do not want to
do!
Review
After you have completed your application(s), we recommend that you find one individual (two at the most) you
trustwhether a professional consultant or someone with insight into the application processto read your essays
one last time and give you feedback. However, we strongly suggest that when you do so, you limit yourself to
requesting feedback from just one or two individuals.
Because the application process is subjective, you will discover that as you add readers, you will also add new and
different opinions. Soon, a multitude of alternatives might appear, and although these varying ideas will not
necessarily be "right" or "wrong"considering that a single candidate's stories can be marketed in countless ways
they can create unnecessary uncertainty.
So, we do not propose that you ignore critical feedback, but instead that you not complicate the final days before you
submit your application and create doubt where it may not be due. If one or two readers support your ideas and
emphasize that your application needs minimal work, you are probably best off ending your feedback loop there and
pressing submit.