TotalGadha GMAT

Word limits always remind me of my school examination days, there used to be a silent competition among students for filling up extra sheets; the number of extra sheets taken by candidate was directly proportional to one’s performance in exam. This phase continued in my life even after I graduated to college because being an Honours student means that you never have dearth of words and you live with the perception that more you write, more marks you are bound to get. Today when I look back, it all sounds funny because now I realize that it’s not more number of words that fetch you marks but the quality of your content that makes you stand apart from the rest.

The word limits or page limits in B Schools essays work as nightmare for applicants who fall in two broad categories.

One- Those who have too much to write.
Two- Those who have too less to write.

Frankly, you are in more trouble if you fall in the second category because in that case you will end up copy-pasting someone else’s material, adding irrelevant stuff just to fill up space and sometimes adding material that you won’t have command on yourself. This generally happens when you either don’t spend enough time on your research/ thought process or when you don’t understand the question explicitly. A candidate has to understand that someone who would be reading your essay is completely unknown to you but is willing to know about you. If you can’t tell best about yourself, no one else can.

The problem with category one is that they will always be in a dilemma while editing their essay about what to keep and what to delete. This category is the biggest cribber when it comes to word count. When an applicant exceeds word limits he/ she is doing two things:

1) Asking admission committee to allot more than average time to his/ her application.
2) Indirectly telling admission committee that your application is better than others because you have got more to tell about yourself than the rest of the candidates. In this case, you are taking a higher risk because if your perception doesn’t match with ad com, you are basically inviting trouble for yourself.

I have always believed that the best way to have a good idea is to have loads of ideas and follow the thumb rule to keep your essay in +/- 10% word limit.

A few tips:

• Read the question carefully and let the thought process flow.
• Scribble down all your thoughts on a piece of paper.
• When you start writing, concentrate on the introduction first, then move to the body of the essay making sure that you are not moving out of the line of the topic of an essay, and finally pen down the conclusion. The flow of your essay should not break from starting till end. While writing, concentrate on what you want to tell about yourself but maintain due professionalism in your write up. Do not repeat the material already listed in the application.
• It’s said that you should write in one sitting only because otherwise, the thought flow breaks. I personally don’t follow this rule, I start writing, take tea breaks when I get tired but I don’t let my thinking process break. Even while taking tea breaks or while taking a stroll in lawn I keep thinking on the topic and when something germinates in my mind, I come back to note it down. At times I even take days to write a single write up.This is a personal choice; you should find your own comfort zone.
• Once you complete writing, start the editing process and keep editing all the verbose, repetitive or out of the line material.
• Revise and revisit
• Page Limits- Many schools give page limits restrictions but then the question arises is what is the correct font size that one should use? Here you need to use a bit of common sense because if you have played enough with fonts in Word Pad then you must be aware that where Verdana -9 looks a decent size, Times New Roman-9 looks very small.
• Regular sizes for fonts are:
  Times New Roman-12
  Verdana -9
  Arial -10-11
  Georgia -10
• Don’t try to squeeze too much in a single page because you really are not fooling anyone. Use an inch margin from both sides.
• How to count words? In Microsoft Word, select the text –> click on Tools–> click Word Count.
• Apart from serving the purpose of knowing about candidate, a B School essay also brings forth candidate’s communication abilities. An essay written within word limits always works to candidate’s advantage because this way one is able to show his/her ability to communicate concisely. An effective communication is one of the qualities that Post MBA employers also look for in candidates.

Happy Writing!