<p>I finished all 3 of my supplemental essays barely within the allotted 1800 characters. I have 1 character left in my intellectual vitality box, 3 characters in my roommate box, and 17 in my why Stanford box.</p>
<p>Yet, when I try to save, it says "The length of your response is longer than allowed by the application for this question. Please amend your answer and try again." -- even though I'm clearly under the limit, as I still have characters available. I experimented a bit and found that, apparently, I can't submit unless I have at least 6 characters available.</p>
<p>I'm just wondering if anyone else is having this issue and whether I should contact the admissions office about it. It says 1800 characters, so I should be able to use 1800 characters, right?</p>
<p>Turns out the short answers (favorite books, favorite magazines, etc.) need to be at least 10 characters under the limit – for me, anyway. Again, anyone else having the same problem?</p>
<p>The problem arises because the space allotted for the essay is small. AKA if you have too many paragraphs it doesn’t matter how many words you have. If you type:</p>
<p>I</p>
<p>Love</p>
<p>Cheese</p>
<p>A</p>
<p>Lot</p>
<p>Do</p>
<p>You?</p>
<p>Even though the char count is way under 1800, it won’t allow you submit your answers. You need to format your paragraphs and essays correctly so that it doesn’t take up too much space. Use less paragraphs, etc. </p>
<p>I hope this helps. I had the same problem, and just combined some paragraphs to make it work.</p>
<p>Thanks. No wonder it was acting up. Though it doesn’t necessarily solve my problem as I only had 3 paragraphs to begin with. I experimented and the only way to make it work would be to combine everything into one long block of text. Did you space after each paragraph or simply indent the first line?</p>
<p>To make my paragraphs I did this:</p>
<p>I[0 char here]
[0 char here]
Love[0 char here]
[0 char here]
Cheese</p>
<p>So basically I just pasted in a paragraph, skipped a line, and then immediately pasted in another paragraph. No indents. No random spaces after the paragraph or in between paragraphs. </p>
<p>I initially had 1 char left for two of the essays, but the paragraph formatting didn’t work, so I had to delete and move around some stuff. </p>
<p>I now have 10 char left for one of my essays, and 13 for the other. The first one I separated into 4 short paragraphs (which surprisingly fit), and the second one I had one small paragraph, one large paragraph, and another small paragraph. </p>
<p>I wish they gave us more space so we could have more paragraphs (I dislike combining everything into one paragraph). I hope you get yours sorted out somehow. 
Good luck!</p>
<p>Thanks a lot. I got it sorted out. Ended up taking a few words out here and there.</p>
<p>Good luck to you too!</p>
<p>The # of paragraphs/length on paper doesn’t seem to be the issue as I tried creating a huge number of lines with one character on each, and it lets me save but cuts off my response in the preview instead. I had to have at least 6 charcters remaining on my 1800-char responses but I could go to 0 on the 300-char ones. It just seems like a weird bug.</p>