<p>What are the word requirements (ex. no more than 500 words)? How many essays can you submit? Sorry if this has been asked before...</p>
<p>Two essays. One is common app one is the "optional" supplement. Both have that 500 word limit and both are open to whatever topic you would like to write about.</p>
<p>I'd also like to state that the word limit is flexible, and if applying on paper virtually impossible to control.
keep it reasonable, but don't kill yourself making contractions and things to keep it at 500. what really matters is the essay.</p>
<p>This is the question i've been thinking about lately. We recently wrote practice essays in English class and my teacher liked my essay, but he crossed off my entire 1st paragraph. Ironically, it was everyone's favorite paragraph...is it important for an essay to be crisp and short OR can it be longer???</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies. I'm wary about going over word limits...</p>
<p>Definitely make it short, concise, meaningful.
And you only need one essay. The second essay is truly optional. So getting together your Harvard application may be the easiest out of all the colleges you'll be applying to.</p>
<p>Actually both my daughters essays were a bit over the word limit and she was accepted. She also did the second essay and her admissions officer commented on it so I think it helped her get in. So all this is a long way of saying write the best essay you can, and don't worry about the word limit. As long as you are in the ballpark, it is more important to write a good essay. And if you have ideas for the second essay, write it. It's not required but is an opportunity to show them more about yourself, and anything that helps them get to know you better is a good thing.</p>
<p>If you can write a good second essay it certainly can't hurt. My son threw in one of the essays he'd had to write for MIT. The "What do you do for fun" one. I think it helped complete the picture of him. And in the end he got into Harvard not MIT. I don't think admissions officers are counting words, but I'd be very leery about going more than a sentence or two over the limit. Have pity on the poor admissions officers, they have to read thousands of essays!</p>
<p>I never knew that you could send the same essay to more than one school. </p>
<p>How do schools regard that practice? Or do they never find out? Is the only information they share the names of their applicants or do they share stuff like essays as well?</p>
<p>The common ap's last essay topic is "make up a topic" and as I recall the supplemental essay for Harvard was something like "is there anything else you want to tell us". Reusing essays seemed like a no-brainer. :)</p>
<p>Do they recognize the topic as coming from the school down the river? Quite possibly. My son also told his interviewer that MIT was his first choice. It didn't stop Harvard from accepting him.</p>
<p>thanx guys!</p>
<p>My essay was ~700 words. You can go over 500, it's set there to encourage people to be concise. I submitted the same essay for Harvard, MIT, Rice. The specific essay prompts for Rice and MIT matched my Harvard common app essay, so I didn't bother to write another one. But make sure the essay matches well!, but then again, you can always tweak all your writings a bit.</p>
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How do schools regard that practice? Or do they never find out? Is the only information they share the names of their applicants or do they share stuff like essays as well?
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<p>It is both common and very acceptable. The common app is specifically designed to send the same essay to multiple schools (not all schools accept the common app, of course).</p>
<p>Interestingly, some schools, like University of Chicago, specifically use very unusual prompts ("How do you feel about Wednesdays?" or "Write an essay about string") to force students to write a new essay for Chicago's application.</p>
<p>Also: It is very important to be concise. You should literally go through every single sentence in the essay and decide whether it's necessary or not, and cut out any sentence, and any words that doesn't effectively tell the reader more about you. This does NOT mean it should be shorter than the 500 word limit- it should be around 500 words. But if you make sure each word counts, you will end up with a much better essay.</p>