<p>How bad is it to go over an essay's length limit? For Stanford's application, it says that the essays "should fit in the spaces provided," but for the short essays section, I went over the 1-page limit by half a page. Will they disapprove of my application because I didn't follow directions? I don't want to change any of my essays, and I don't even have time to since the application is due today. Any thoughts? Thanks!</p>
<p>Stanford is really strict with the character limits for the short essays online. I made my essay several characters longer than 1500 (I think that is it) and when I looked at the print preview, it had cut the superfluous part. I don't know how strict they are with paper apps though, but I can't imagine they would be unfair (cut online and not paper). The short essays can't possibly be a page, my 1500 character responses were 1/2 page-long answers at best and they were pushing the character bounds (1497 I think for one of them).</p>
<p>-Eddie-</p>
<p>Eddie, I meant that my 3 short essays COMBINED went over the 1-page limit by half a page. I've been playing with the margins and the font size (since I'm doing the paper application), but if I want all 3 of my short essays to fit onto one page, it looks very messy and unpresentable. I may just have to submit the extra half page. Thanks for the online perspective, though.</p>
<p>The minimum font size is a 10 or 9, i don't remember.</p>
<p>I went a little less than a half page over the Duke limit. However, my paper was double spaced and had page numbers and my name on every pages so its not that far off. I'm sure anything that is about +15% in length is fine...</p>
<p>you shouldn't do double space. it makes the paper unnecessarily long</p>
<p>if its indicated in the question that you should double space, you should (and I will) probably double space.</p>
<p>in my experience (Stanford, Cornell, Brown, JHU), none of them required double spacing.</p>
<p>odd, Duke's specifically said it needed to be double spaced. I hate double spacing, I think it looks bad, but whatever...</p>
<p>Cheerio, 1/2 page extra is a lot. Stanford adcoms will not appreciate that.</p>
<p>They certainly won't reject you based on the fact that you went over the limit, but like clig said, you went over the limit and they mite not appreciate you for that. </p>
<p>Unless it was something really intriguing in your writing, then half a page won't spell disaster.</p>
<p>As a matter of fact, Stanford specificly said that a 10 font size can be used and the big essay has a 5400 character limit.</p>
<p>i believe i had a 1300 words essay in that limit.</p>
<p>Since we're all pitted against one another for just a few spots, I surmise the adcom will see Cheerio's extra poke at the prompt to be an unfair advantage. It's not that his extra half-a-page was such an egregious transgression in and of itself, but if compared to an applicant of equal merit, I reckon Cheerio's application will be frowned upon. Plus, I think they're looking for concise writing, not necessarily profound subject matter.</p>
<p>i shortened my essay to a degree that it was BARELY grammatical because for some reason I had a lot of stuff happened in my life.</p>