<p>My essay is only about 3200 characters, while the space allotted is around 4900. I recycled an essay from the commonapp, so that's why it's that short. I made it about 50 words longer this time though. Is this bad? Will they think I'm not serious enough to write a long enough essay? ahh</p>
<p>That is fine. My essay is 580 words, a little under 3100 characters. Most colleges ask for 500 words, so I'd say that anything over 425 words would be fine as long as you can get your message across. I dont think they expect you to use all 4900 characters (over 900 words!).</p>
<p>umm... The length isnt important at all...
U get ur point across... thats all</p>
<p>second what Antarius says, however if it is remarkably short, then that might make a bad impression</p>
<p>600 words isn't remarkably short is it?</p>
<p>
[quote]
I dont think they expect you to use all 4900 characters (over 900 words!).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Where did you get that figure from? From three previous college essays, I have the following statistics (words/characters with spaces [as on the Stanford online app]):
512 / 3238 (6.32 char/word)
295 / 1950 (6.61 char/word)
285 / 1806 (6.34 char/word)</p>
<p>Totaling them up, we have:
1092 / 6994 (6.40 char/word)</p>
<p>I calculate approximately 6.4 characters/word, so in a 4900 character essay, it'd be about 765 words MAX. I do agree, though, that 500 words is a better figure to go by, all around.</p>
<p>I think it's actually more impressive if you're able to write a good essay using less words. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, I'm not one of those types of people..I'm alwaaays flirting with the word limits -__-</p>
<p>I only had 500 words. I don't think it will matter.</p>
<p>"I'm alwaaays flirting with the word limit"</p>
<p>maybe you should get a life and start flirting with humans.</p>
<p>LOL, jk you know i love ya</p>
<p>aw crap. mines 778 words on that long essay. only 4300 chars though....so im still 600 chars short so im good i hope.</p>
<p>Uh oh, my essay is only like 2835 out of 4800 characters! Is that dreadfully short?</p>
<p>man my essay is soooooo long.....4896 characters/835 words!!! but i think its pretty exhaustive and portrays quite a lot about my personality...but still i think i need to cut it down!!</p>
<p>My essay is really short too. It was only about 2900 some characters. That was after I added stuff to it to make it longer. Now I need one about 6000 characters. I don't know how I'm going to do that.</p>