<p>for the 500 word essay. Is that enough over the limit that it'll annoy them?</p>
<p>For what it's worth, my essay is ~600 words. I went through it very carefully, and each paragraph serves an important purpose in the essay; there's just no way to say what I want to say with less. I did, however, carefully remove several sentences which served no clear purpose; one of them actually seemed to take away from the essay. I think originally the essay was about 640 or 650 words.</p>
<p>Frankly, I don't think the admissions officers will mind, as long as your essay is well-written.</p>
<p>you're fine. this question appears all the time.</p>
<p>That's fine, squemily. If you were asking about 800 words for the 500 words, the territory would be a lot more slippery....</p>
<p>Thanks, everybody, I feel a lot more at ease now.</p>
<p>Perplexitudinous: I know exactly what you mean... I took out everything that wasn't purposeful, but at a certain point the word count isn't worth sacrificing meaning.</p>
<p>damn i cut all mine down to 500 exactly. it took away a lot of the meaning too</p>
<p>i cut mine down to 500, back in the day... taking away the less great parts and keeping the better parts... sure I deleted some "meaning", but I say if you have 1000 words and need 500 it's a perfect opportunity to trim the essay for quality and to be easier to read</p>
<p>Mine is around 700 words. Do you think that is pushing the limit too far?</p>
<p>I think that if the essay is interesting, no one would count the words
But even if YOU cannot read it without falling asleep, then you might want to consider cutting it a bit</p>
<p>try not to mess with word limits. although they won't count the number of words, if you go over, colleges sometimes assume one of two things:
1) you can't read directions
2) you choose not to follow directions
if you're essay is great, then leave it as is, but the truth is many of these essays can be cut down. take out wordy phrases, chase "is not" to isn't, and etc..</p>
<p>I would say that 700 is too long. If you think about it, if everyone wrote 700 words, that's almost 25% more time they have to spend reading instead of sleeping/eating/relaxing. At 700, I would say that you'd have to decide which paragraph contributed the least amount of meaning and depth to your essay, and cut that one. I had to do that to one of my essays... but I think it was worth it. Who knows, maybe your essay would be better without that paragraph?</p>
<p>But anyways, 570 words is totally fine, I think. Most of mine were 530-540ish.</p>