Hi, I wrote my college essay and copy/pasted it into the Common App from Google Docs, but there is a discrepancy between the word count according to Google and the word count according to the Common App. I am certain that it was copied correctly and the words were counted correctly. Why is this happening, and are there any negative ramifications?
Do you have any parenthetical statements separated from a clause by hyphens - like this one - in your essay? The Common App’s word counting mechanism uses a splitting function that recognizes any string of non-space characters that is surrounded by spaces as a word. This means that if your essay contains a hyphen surrounded on both sides by spaces, the Common App will regard that as a word. Google Docs, however, does not, so my essay that registered as 649 words on Google Docs was counted as 652 by the Common App because I used three hyphens. This won’t create any issues with the essay itself, but you will have to cut a few words (or some “words”) out for the application to be submitted.