<p>On the online application for the personal essay it says that basically there is no word limit and to just upload a document if you exceed 5000 characters. However on the paper version of the application it says not to exceed 500 words. Should the same word limit be carried over to the online application or not?</p>
<p>judgment call. if your essay doesn't drag at all, it's okay to breach the 500 word limit. otherwise, get your metaphorical butcher knife and make the essay bleed. </p>
<p>although in either case you shouldn't stray very far over 700 or so words. try and stay reasonably close to the end of one page on MS word, with normal settings.</p>
<p>I totally saw that too! And was like 'what???'. I'd go with what daveb says - I talked to a guy at Cornell admissions (I know, not the same school, but still an ivy) who said word length doesn't matter that much if the words "need" to be there, they'll definitely read a longer essay, but it shouldn't be over maybe 1500 words.</p>
<p>damn, that's a helluva lot more than I had been advised on. basically everyone I've spoken with said that essays breaking 800 words, if noticeably lengthy, are red flags.</p>
<p>Respect the admissions officer's time and keep it under 5000 characters. It is ALWAYS possible to do, and shows your ability to express yourself succinctly. If I was an admissions officer and got a longer essay, I would tend to be view it with suspicion unless it was SPECTACULAR.</p>
<p>So is it the 500 word thing that's important, or the 5000 characters? Because my essay is under 5000 characters, but it's 780 words... is that a problem?</p>
<p>I honestly don't believe that admissions officers sit there and count either the character or word length. So long as the essay doesn't LOOK like it's a lot longer than 500 words/5000 characters, you should be fine.</p>
<p>The Why Brown? and Who interested you in Brown? questions are different, since you can't upload the document. Those have to be within the word limit.</p>
<p>Well 800 words is very likely going to look a lot longer than 500 words...</p>
<p>It's interesting that they say 500 words/5000 characters, when those are two very different lengths.</p>
<p>What about the PLME essays? I have one that I cannot cut down and its pretty close to 800 words. The other one is close to 700. Think they will get bored?</p>
<p>For PLME, the online app gives space for 3000 character and 3500 character essays, or roughly 500 -515 and 585-600 word essays, respectively. The online app does not let you cut and paste essays longer than this character limit, nor does it let you upload an essay, so you'll have no choice but to cut 'em down...</p>
<p>Not necessarily, Kristina. Words don't have uniform length. The mere look of the length of the full essay will subsequently vary from person to person. Hence the differences offered between 500 words and 5000 characters.</p>
<p>so basically i would have no problem uploading my personal essay if it is 4000 characters with spaces, right?</p>
<p>hello oh as well for the "personal activities and interests" section, what is the format for online app, because i can't decide if i will have to do paper app instead if there are some hard limits.</p>
<p>That's fine. I think that could even go into the box they provide you with online, but you could upload it too.</p>
<p>And there is no set format for your activities and interests lists. Do it in a way you want that is easy enough to read and get a gist for while fully expressing you and your accomplishments.</p>