<p>Has anyone gone over their word limit in their essays for a public school?
Has anyone gone over their word limit in their essays for UMD?</p>
<p>I heard privates will read your entire essay even if you go over, but is not true for publics.</p>
<p>thank you.</p>
<p>I don’t think you can count on that generalization.</p>
<p>The best thing to do is edit your essay and keep to the limit. The reality is that adcoms read hundreds if not thousands of essays each year. And while college students are a shiny new hope of the future, even the best of student writers are really just not that good at writing essays…take pity on the essay readers and stay within the word count. In other words, you risk boring or annoying the adcom and the truth is that your life story or your grand insights are not so compelling as to require an extra word count. Really.</p>
<p>What you have to say CAN be boiled down to the word count. In fact, the exercise of paring what you want to say down the the essence (and within the word count) is probably the one thing that can help an essay from being too pedantic or dreary.</p>
<p>You are not suppose to exceed the word limit. The limits are imposed for a reason. Schools will state a few words is acceptable but be realistic. An applicant is expected to follow simple directions. Therefore if you surpass the word count, it clearly demonstrates your inability to follow directions.</p>
<p>Furthermore, you do not need 1000, etc words to make your point. I agree with @annikasorrensen. The more succinct the essay, the better. No one likes to read wordy papers filled with “fluff” and padding.</p>
<p>I have never read a long essay that could not benefit GREATLY by editing and shortening. And I have read hundreds if not thousands.</p>
<p>thanks everyone!</p>
<p>my essay was ~360, but i managed to shave off a whole bunch down to 300 exactly. and i feel pretty good about it too.</p>