<p>I went through, read my essay multiple times, and I could only manage to shrink it from 645 words to 620. I tried taking sentences out, but when I did, it messed up the flow and left parts out that I thought needed to be in there. Is 120 words over the limit too high, or should I wait until I figure out how to get it under 500 words?</p>
<p>Mine's over 800 words, and I'm submitting it. ^_^</p>
<p>Talk to your college/guidance counselor. Ask them if the goodness of the essay outweighs the length. If it doesn't, try writing the essay over from scratch, but using the same ideas (just different phrases.)</p>
<p>REMINDER....LOOk at the common appl. NO WHERE does it say that there is a 500 word limit, if you noticed they omitted that this year, doesn't mean it should be 1000 words, but a little over should be fine, make sure when it saved it saved it completely. Good luck!</p>
<p>Well if it is 500 and it's 120 that is bad, but a little under 50 words over the limit may be fine. If you need help cutting it down, i'd be happy to critique it.</p>
<p>If this is for Common App, you're fine. Mine is 620 too.</p>
<p>If it's for another prompt that explicitly mandates 500 or fewer, you need to either chop it down or write a new one.</p>