<p>ED has to be sent out by tomorrow morning, and I was wondering how long each of the 3 essays for Vanderbilt need to be. Can anyone please send me an approximate word count for "Personal Essay", "Academic Interest", and "Why Vanderbilt"??? I'm gonna be nervous all day if I don't know that I am within ballpark word length for all of these.</p>
<p>Also, for the "Personal Essay", would it be a good idea to go ahead and use a personal narrative I wrote in my English class? Of course I condensed it. It is about me winning 1st in Extemp. Writing at the national HOSA conference in Nashville. It talks about my thoughts and feelings before and after, and two lessons I learned from it. It scored a proficient for the 2nd draft by my English teacher (who grades insanely hard, nobody in my whole AP class has made above a proficient yet). Would this be acceptable to satisfy where it says, "to understand more fully who you are and what you value"? It has 2 lessons I've learned in life written in it, one dealing with my relationship to my mother and the other of learning how to do things for myself instead of others. I think those would be things I value?</p>
<p>Sorry if that seems unorganized, I'm just stressed out right now.</p>
<p>I am just responding based on my son's personal experience from the Vandy application last year. He didn't know exactly what the admissions office was looking for re: essay length on the Why Vandy? and Academic Interest essays, but as I recall, his were only about 2-3 paragraphs long for each of those--certainly less than a page. I think those essays can be whatever you think as long as you get your message across. </p>
<p>The topic for the main essay sounds great--I don't know what this year's application looks like or if there is a specific subject requested for the personal essay, but as long as it allows a "topic of your choice" type of subject, I think that would certainly be appropriate. You sound like a great writer!</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Thanks for the response, that helps a lot with the other 2 essays. Do you happen to know approximately how long your son's personal essay was?</p>
<p>I believe my personal essay was about 2 and a half pages, double spaced.</p>
<p>Dear Lnkin:</p>
<p>2 to 2 1/2 pages sounds about right. Most schools don't really want anything longer than that since they have so many essays to read.</p>
<p>Lnkin,
Last year, D's Why Vandy essay was almost 1 page single spaced and personal essay was 2 pages single spaced. Her interest statements were 1 paragraph. We pulled out copies of S's essays from a few years ago and found that his were shorter than hers, but left hers as is and sent them on. As you would guess, I think it's more about what you have to say than how long it takes you to do it.
Good luck to you!</p>