<p>You’re all spending way too much time worrying about the length requirements. I wrote a 1600 word essay for Columbia (well, for all of the other schools I applied to as well) about an extracurricular of mine and was accepted early via likely letter (with a handwritten note from my admissions officer about said activity).</p>
<p>You should try to keep it as concise as possible, but if you’re confident in your essay and it’s longer than the ‘requirement,’ just go for it.</p>
<p>^As I recall, lolcats4 was homeschooled. If you are homeschooled, many of the rules go out the window. Without traditional teacher and counselor recommendations, school extra-curricular activities, GPAs and school profiles, the homeschooled student’s essay becomes exponentially more important than the essay from a traditional high school student. Stated differently, the homeschooled student relies more heavily on the essay to fill in data points than the traditional student. Applicants who are homeschooled should feel free to “go nuts” on the essay; others should be concerned about disregarding application instructions that have been established over time by the very people who are reading their essays.</p>
<p>^ I’m going to have respectfully disagree, especially since I was ‘homeschooled’ in a very loose sense of the word. In fact, the reason I think I had so much success is because I made my application as close to that of a normal high schooler’s as possible I was essentially a full-time student at the local community college, and so I had most of the things a lot of homeschoolers dont have…GPA, recommendations, etc, and some of my ECs involved the local high school (swim team). In addition, the essay I wrote could easily have been written by someone going to high school. My ‘counselor’ recommendation covered anything that might have been missing in my app because I was homeschooled.</p>
<p>So honestly I don’t think the essay word limit matters so much. Keep it concise, but you won’t be disqualified if it goes over.</p>
<p>^In any event, you were not a “traditional high school student.” Whether it’s homeschooling, community college schooling, or fitting in “school” while homeless, non-traditional students should have much more leeway in crafting their applications. I just think it’s potentially dangerous for a traditional student to rely on how a non-traditional student may have approached the application process.</p>
<p>In any event, I hope you’re enjoying Pomona, lolcats4!</p>
<p>Agreed with pbr. Listen to directions, it’s important in college and applying to college.</p>
<p>I visited the other day and the admissions officer told me when they say 2 pages, they don’t mean two full pages. Therefore, no more than 500 words.</p>
<p>500 doesn’t mean 500. Just write the best essay you can as short as you can without losing meaning. And if it’s well written, no one will care whether it was 200, 300 words over or not. My essay was about 700 and I got in. The writing class here is also somewhat lenient with word counts as well.</p>
<p>1) what you want to say in 850 words you can say in 500 words. if you can’t, you’re not thinking hard enough.
2) you should care about the psychology of reading - my suggestion is it should be single spaced and no more than 1 page - it is easy for someone to read it, to read ahead of themselves, to review without having to look at two pages simultaneously.</p>
<p>and the default for your word is 1.5 spacing. word itself usually defaults to no line spacing.</p>
<p>and i disagree that 1.5 spacing is easier on the eyes, in fact it makes your essay longer, and unless you want to write in the margins (which is where the double spacing came from) it is unnecessary and superfluous. but that is my opinion, you will find two or three opinions that will be different.</p>
<p>I don’t get why keeping it under 500 is so hard. I always write the first three paragraphs and I’m mentally exhausted, and I look and I’m at 400 words, and I pile on another 80 or so and it’s done. If you wrote about something for 1,000 words, it’s probably too much unnecessary information for a person. Remember, it’s like a job interview. The details aren’t as important as the bigger picture of who you are.</p>
<p>hey lolcats - you are a bit of the exception, so i don’t think the anecdote of i did it and it worked should apply to everyone. when in doubt stick to conventions that are proven to work should be the emphasis. as a whole i agree with pbr, there is a bigger burden placed on students in your case to come across more fully developed, and you came to the challenge. but merely as a critic here - i imagine you could have written something as good in 500-750 words and be admitted. your extra-length didn’t make your essay more compelling, you made the essay compelling.</p>
<p>Well, I wrote about 8 years of experience in web design, and my essay was 850 words. When I first wrote it, I just put down ALL my ideas on the paper - it was about 1600 words. I shortened it and cut it down to ONLY those that wholly pertain to what I was trying to get across. If somebody can get 8 years worth of experience into 500 words, that’s great. Good for them. I can’t, and that’s largely due to my writing style. What would stand out more - 4000 people all writing their essays in the same pithy and detail-deprived fashion, or a few people who brought some more substance to their essay? I’m not slandering your essay if it was <500, I’m just saying that sometimes, it’s good to be a different, even if you’re bending the rules in some cases.</p>
<p>…But this is my opinion, and the admissions office may very well disagree.</p>
<p>who are you reacting to? i don’t get the purpose of your post.</p>
<p>and who says that length is related to substance? and even if it is good to be different, it doesn’t mean that you’re essay is any good. it is a gamble to break rules - it can work out marvelously or poorly. that is the big point. and in general - going beyond the rules is usually seen as brash and not bold.</p>
<p>I’m reacting to everybody who’s completely ignoring the guy (not lolcat) who said his essay was 7xx words, and he got in. You’re all behaving as if exceeding the 500 word limit is a cardinal sin. The purpose of my post is to try to even remotely get you to see this from my vantage point.</p>
<p>Quantity isn’t proportional to quality, that’s obvious. I’m just saying that some topics need more words to be expressed. Stating that all topics can be contained within 500 words if “you think hard enough” is just absurd. It’s one thing to describe an afternoon’s experience in 500 words, like some other applicants have done. A lot of their essays have been fabulous. But the thing is, there is only so much information that can be put into a topic like that. You’re not going to describe the smells and the sights unless they pertain to what you’re trying to prove.</p>
<p>On the other hand, some people choose to write about an experience that spans over a larger time period. What I’m trying to get through is that the amount of information is directly related to the time span that you cover in your essay. If someone writes about a how a 3 month trip affected their outcome on life, doesn’t it make sense that he/she will have to include a bit more information than the dude who wrote about an afternoon’s worth of experience? </p>
<p>Sure, you can condense it in 500 words, but that doesn’t always do the message justice. I could’ve cut 350 more words out of my essay to make it 500 words, but I would’ve likely had to take out a lot of the stuff that describes or leads to who I’ve become. That would have been more detrimental to my essay than to leave in the 350 and take an extra minute or two out of the admissions officers’ time.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to be derogatory here, and I’m not trying to put you down. I respect your opinion, and all the help you give around the Columbia board is greatly appreciated. I’m just arguing my side of the case, and as I said before, it’s my opinion. Frankly, I don’t think the admissions officer will care if your essay is a little longer than 500 words, as long as it conveys to them WHO YOU ARE. Isn’t that what the essay is all about?</p>
<p>Oh, and I called the admissions office 3 different times, and all their responses were the same: Double space it.</p>
<p>xShadow63, for the sake of your application, I hope you’re right. Getting “8 years worth of experience into 500 words” is not the point of the essay, however; rather, getting 18 years (one’s life) into the essay, by means of an anecdote or two, with the limits imposed by the prompt, is the point. Think of Hemingway, not Pynchon. There will be those who get admitted DESPITE a conscious decision to ignore the very clear, well-developed directions, but there will also be many scofflaws who are rejected and left to wonder whether their “independence” resulted in their admissions demise. Good luck to all y’all!</p>
<p>1) you are not being derogatory, though you are being combative - rather unnecessarily. and to put me down you’d have to insult me, which you haven’t. you’re mostly defending yourself.
2) why ask the question if you just were planning on getting all pugnacious and fighting to defend your thoughts - take criticism, agree, disagree, but it becomes entirely different for you to take opinions of individuals on this board and then all of a sudden try to defend yourself. don’t ask the question if in the end you wish to use the thread for self-justification.
3) how long you write says a lot about who you are as well. is part of the point. it says what you think about rules. and what i wanted to clarify. being a rebel is indeed ‘sexy,’ and as you put it can make you seem different. but it could (and more often does) make you look the opposite. recognize the risk you take, and take it freely. and further, recognize the criticism you receive here is blind - we don’t know you, we just know what you’ve written, and so do not accept it to necessarily be grade A advice. i can’t tell you anything more than i know. my advice comes from some experience on how people think about/conceive information from strangers. and mentally - a page is more manageable than 2 pages, even if the latter has fewer words. further, you need to care about your audience here - and i know you seem frustrated on here, but from what you write it comes across a lot like “this is who i am, deal with it” which is not necessarily the best way to invite someone to your essay. consider that at times being yourself is not selling yourself.</p>
<p>4) lastly - i agree the time span will dictate the length. and as your essay is well and done this perhaps is less for you but others reading the thread. choose something that is manageable - you can always construct an event that is metonymic for a greater historical process. your first day in high school can stand in for the whole of your adolescence. if you wish to write a history of your life - it will go beyond the limit. brevity almost always is best (i wish someone would tell lawyers this).</p>
<p>because in the end the purpose of the essay is not who you are, but rather, how do you effectively express yourself within a confined amount of space. you could be a fascinating person, but a dud at this part of the application - which could lead to a denial.</p>
<p>so i again emphasize - be proud of your essay, that is all that really matters because it is you who is submitting it. but in setting up this thread you were looking for advice, and with the good comes the criticism. that is to say those of us with some experience that in general the risk isn’t worth the reward. but perhaps indeed you may be the exception, if you are, you should know it, you don’t need to be so combative to exclaim it on here. and if some of the comments here have put some doubt in your mind, that is good - it is the reason you seek advice in the first place. but if after reading your essay again you think that it both meets the standard of the question and is how you wish to represent yourself - then that is what matters.</p>
<p>*and a very nice post by pbr. good luck to you xshadow. in the end our hope (my hope) is that you think about issues you perhaps hadn’t beforehand to strengthen your application so you can be admitted to columbia. it also means we aren’t going to be soft on you.</p>
<p>And a very nice, thoughtful post by admissionsgeek. As a lawyer (wink), I am a firm believer in brevity. admissionsgeek is absolutely right in stating that only you can decide what works best for you. I really do wish you, and your fellow applicants, all the best in this grueling, somewhat unpleasant, always exciting, application process.</p>
<p>I see where you’re coming from about the length. And yeah, if you can keep it short, then you should do it. But I think that an admissions officer would care more about the words themselves rather than how many there are.</p>
<p>And it’s not being rebellious just for the sake of it, obviously. I didn’t look at the requirement and think, “oh yeah, screw the 500 word limit i’m making mine more.” It’s just that as I wrote, I realized that what I wanted to write couldn’t be contained in 500 words. I was under the assumption of 2 page max anyway, so that may have also had a part to play…</p>
<p>Anyways, there’s no point in arguing any further because it’s evident that you’re not going to convince me, or vice versa. We can’t get into the officers’ brains, so now we just have to wait till decisions come out 
Good luck to everybody!</p>