Writing a Winning Essay That is Limited to 150 words or, yikes, 150 characters

When faced with an essay prompt that carries a low word count or character limit , your first thought might be, “Great, I can knock this one off quickly.” However when you start writing the essay, you may find that the word count poses significant challenges. Just when you’ve started to develop your idea, it may be time to stop writing because you’ve run out of space. My advice for tackling these essays is to view them differently from longer essays. When a school states, ‘describe yourself in 150 characters,’ don’t even try to draft an essay. Use humor or creativity to answer the question. Think outside of the box. For essays with 150-200 word limits, make one very strong point rather than trying to squeeze in three vague concepts. When you approach essays from this vantage point, ideas should come much more easily.