My application essay was not even remotely close to the 500 word number. The MIT application had an option where you could ignore their essay questions and just choose one of your own, so I basically made my Q/A a long-form joke. That was about 12 years ago.
A friend and classmate of mine at MIT went on to work for the admissions office for a few years, during part of which time we were roommates. The two things I learned from this were that the amount of work that went into reading the applications was astonishing, and that even an incredible essay submission couldn't save you if the admissions staff were convinced that you just weren't academically strong enough to make it through the school.
This leads me to believe that the changes weren't just to "remove the larger-than-life quality" of the essay. Rather, they were probably introduced to make it easier and faster for admissions staff to get the information they need about an applicant and simultaneously (as the article implies) to probe specific parts of the applicants' backgrounds.
It seems like a very logical change to me. I've always thought that the college interview was a far better way to go than the essay---when a person is given infinite time to prepare an answer they can mask a lot of deficiencies in areas that are extremely useful, e.g., thinking on your feet, dealing with other people, et cetera.
A friend and classmate of mine at MIT went on to work for the admissions office for a few years, during part of which time we were roommates. The two things I learned from this were that the amount of work that went into reading the applications was astonishing, and that even an incredible essay submission couldn't save you if the admissions staff were convinced that you just weren't academically strong enough to make it through the school.
This leads me to believe that the changes weren't just to "remove the larger-than-life quality" of the essay. Rather, they were probably introduced to make it easier and faster for admissions staff to get the information they need about an applicant and simultaneously (as the article implies) to probe specific parts of the applicants' backgrounds.
It seems like a very logical change to me. I've always thought that the college interview was a far better way to go than the essay---when a person is given infinite time to prepare an answer they can mask a lot of deficiencies in areas that are extremely useful, e.g., thinking on your feet, dealing with other people, et cetera.