<p>Is this okay?</p>
<p>I would say stick to the word limit, but the Common App's character limit on that is much bigger, if I remember correctly. I don't think 50 words should matter much in this case.</p>
<p>Ehhhhhhhhh, IDK. That's a pretty significant increase. If it truly cannot be cut down i guess you can live with it. But in reality you should just follow the rules.</p>
<p>For something like that I generally try and stick to the +/- 10% rule. If it's worth it though (and you could probably have someone else try and assess what you wrote) then the extra length is acceptable. I think my final version is right at 155, and that's down from 178.</p>
<p>I still don't understand why they say 150 words, but they give something like 3,500 characters. What?</p>
<p>i got lucky, edited down from 234 to 150! Advice from my college friends: Best to stick with 150 but don't think it matter too much if you go over a little.</p>
<p>if you cut it down to 170 words, its perfectly fine. dont worry.</p>
<p>There's a huge character limit to provide for longer words... Just to be sure the ~150 words all fit, especially for someone who uses huge words.</p>
<p>Definately cut it down.</p>
<p>There's a 3500 character limit, so take advantage of it. Do you think colleges are going to count every word? As long as you don't make it too long and make sure that it is concise, you'll be fine</p>
<p>My short answer has 350 words, and I still left 1500 characters unused.</p>
<p>Admission officer has many things to do, so they don't waste their time to count every word. :D</p>
<p>they just might look at more than one application...</p>
<p>I cut mine down to exactly 150 words. I think they'd be able to tell if it's a little long, but I doubt they'll reject you over it.</p>
<p>There's a word limit because they have a lot to read, and it also forces you to write with brevity and clarity.</p>
<p>Stick to a short essay, believe me.</p>
<p>kyledavid80: That's for them highly-inflected ultrafusional languages, if you're writing in one of them Native American tongues. ;-) (Or German!)</p>
<p>They might not count every word, but I think I could tell which essay was 200 words and which essay is 150. That's why I agree with the +/- 10% rule...you do not want to anger the admissions people by wasting their time with long essays when they clearly set a limit.</p>