<p>Can my essay be 510 words or is that strict guideline?</p>
<p>510 is not going to be an issue.</p>
<p>They probably wont notice the difference. They wont count your words. They have bettter things to do (I would hope).</p>
<p>wait I thought the limit was 5000 characters</p>
<p>Actually, I went to a Brown night tonight, and the Admissions Officer told us that their computer automatically stops printing an essay after the 500th word for all electronically submitted essays, so they'll only read your first 500 words.</p>
<p>yea but 5000 characters is more than 2.5 pages, and 2.5 pages is around 800 words...then why would they put a character limit instead of a word limit...this is confusing...</p>
<p>littlefighterjet, are you sure he didn't say they'll read ur first 5000 characters, because i'm pretty sure they'd put a word limit on the online application if they had one.... All they say is your responses should not exceed 1500, 500, and 5000 words. (and 3000 and 3500 for PLME responses)</p>
<p>I know a girl who got in ED last year to Brown and she had a 800 word essay. It was a really good one tho</p>
<p>"Brevity is the soul.."</p>
<p>ok i just called Brown and they said they really don't care for the online essay if you exceed 500 words as long as you stay within the character limit. They said in the past years many ppl have written very long essays because they wanted to tell as much as they could about themselves, and Brown said they're fine with that. Although Citation X is right, making the essays really long (unless the essay is extremely extremely interesting) is not a good idea. The last thing you want is for the Brown guy to stop reading half way through your essay.</p>
<p>Though they're not going to do anything so drastic as have a printer set only to go to the 500th word, remember, they know about how long these things should be. If you plan on exceeding 500 by a significant amount, make sure that you can keep their attention so that your words don't feel longer than anyone else's 500 and don't appear to be as long.</p>
<p>Just send the what you think is most appropriate really.</p>
<p>Is it ok if you're around 1000 chracters below the limit? I think that only comes out to like half a double spaced page or so.</p>
<p>Um...sorry if this is a silly question, but is it a character limit with spaces or without?</p>
<p>the limit includes spaces</p>
<p>Shobhit2006 -- it's 500, 1500, and 5000 <i>characters</i> not words.
A 5000 word essay is approaching a 10 page research paper.</p>
<p>All my essays are within 10 characters of the character limit. Are they too long?</p>
<p>taffy you're fine</p>
<p>oops... I just did a word count and my essay's approaching 900 words. But hey, it's only 4989 characters long!</p>
<p>I'm glad everyone's essays are going well (really, I am, lol), but I'm also a bit jealous because...the deadline is staring me in the face, and my essay is 2,300 characters over the limit.</p>
<p>Why am I so wordy?! Ack. <em>goes back to deleting and fixing</em></p>
<p>what, did u write a novel or something? 0_o</p>
<p>keep in mind how many applications admissions officers are reading every day. reading an essay that's 400 words over the limit at 2 AM might **** them off, and well, that could just affect your decision. if you can get your meaning across in fewer words, do so.</p>
<p>Well, is it me or is the only limit they specify 5000 chars? I don't see anything about 500 words anywhere on the app. I guess maybe they in fact expect a 5000 char essay?</p>
<p>The paper app gives you two pages. How much is that is words? :-?</p>