<p>just a quick question thats probably not that big of a deal, the online essay portion of the application says 400 - 500 words, 3000 Characters max for the required question does this mean max 500 words or 3000 characters whichever comes first, or you can go over one as long as it doesn’t exceed the other? Right now my essay is 545 Words but only 2963 Characters(with spaces). Should I worry about this? This is the only thing I lack from having a completed application.</p>
<p>am I still decently early in the process for having a 100% completed file? I will have these essays submitted in the next day or two.</p>
<p>Revise your essay, ans see if you can take anything out that you may have already touched on or mentioned. Try not to be repeditive or anything like that. I think what its saying is between 400-500 words try not to exceed 3000 characters. Im not applying this year so I could not tell you for sure, good luck!</p>
<p>Your essay MUST be 500 words or less AND it MUST by 3000 characters or less. The academy doesn't want to read a novel and they also want to see if you can be clear and concise in a given amount of space. Just obey the rules, believe me, it's not worth the extra 45 words to go outside the allotted space. I don't know about the USAFA application because I didn't try to submit a response that was outside the space constraints, but for the Naval Academy application, it wouldn't even let you submit if the essay response was too long. Try and cut some things out and represent your best in those essays. They're an opportunity to show a little bit of your personality on an application full of statistics. If you need more feedback on how to do this, then you can PM me and I can explain a little bit what I did, but you should be fine if you just eliminate unnecessary fluff and go straight to the point.</p>