We reconsider the issue of large-volume compactifications of the heterotic string in light of the recent discoveries about strongly-coupled string theories.Our conclusion remains firmly negative with respect to classical compactifications of the ten-dimensional field theory, albeit for a new reason: When the internal sixfold becomes large in heterotic units, the theory acquires an additional threshold at energies much less then the naive Kaluza-Klein scale. It is this additional threshold that imposes the ultimate limit on the compactification scale M KK > 4 · 10 7 GeV for any compactification; for most compactifications, the actual limit is much higher. (Generically, M KK > α GUT M Planck in either SO(32) or E 8 × E ′ 8 heterotic string.) ⋆