<p>I was wondering if stanford had a limit for the essay length on the common application. Mine is 656 words, and I am having a pretty hard time deleting any of it.</p>
<p>Don’t worry if your essay is over by a bit. The “limit” is not really a limit. They have a number because they want you can be in the ballpark (like you don’t have to hit it on the dot, you can go over a bit). </p>
<p>Like say they ask for a 800 word essay, they aren’t going to kill you if you hit 805. They just want to make sure that you don’t rant on to 1,000 words. Essays can go over, but just don’t go over by a lot.</p>
<p>Well, i was more so asking about how long the common application essay suggested limit was. Like 500 words, 700 words, etc. But, thanks for the very quick respone cdz512.</p>
<p>Are you talking about the general common app essay? I know that one says 250 or more… mine was around 750. You can’t really say much in 250 words imo… so don’t worry about it if its over. If I remember correctly the supplements have character limits so what you have to look at is whether or not your essay fits within the character limit when you paste it into the text box.</p>
<p>ok, cus like i said mine is 656, and i was afraid that it was too long as most tell me the limit should be around 500. But, when i heard that, went to yales website and they suggested 500 while stanford had like 4 diff essays that were all diff essay length. All it said was make sure it fits on one page, so i lessened my margins to 1 inch all the way around to get it to fit.</p>
<p>Wait I was wondering, are you taking about this one:
“**Personal Essay **Please write an essay (250 words minimum) on a topic of your choice or on one of the options listed below, and attach it to your application before submission.”</p>
<p>If so there isn’t really a limit to it. Yale’s 500 word limit is it’s supplement essays, not the common app one.</p>
<p>If you’re talking about the common app main essay you are fine. Mine was almost to a 1000 words lol.</p>
<p>it must fit onto 1 page single spaced</p>
<p>NJDS, surely you don’t mean that the personal essay has to fit on one page. My essay was 750 words and I have a friend whose own was also near 1000 words (clearly more than one page) and everything turned out fine. When you do the print preview on commonapp they give you A LOT of space for that essay. The supplement essays, however, have a fixed amount of space.</p>
<p>hpfan018 is correct. My essay last year was about 900 words (page and a quarter single-spaced). When you have finished your essay carefully choose one or two people to read it and ask them about how well the paper flowed. Some people can make a 1000 word paper feel like a 500 word paper, and others vice versa.</p>
<p>Editing can be strenuous, but it is even more difficult to write with limits bogging your brain down. My tip is that you try carrying a notebook around with you and try to write your essay with a pen. It will stop you from going to a thesaurus, second-guessing yourself, and checking how many words you have. I ended up writing my best essay after getting bored in latin class last fall a week before the application deadline.</p>
<p>Good Luck! And keep at it – you’ll love yourself in a few months for starting early :-)</p>