<p>I just entered in my essay in the optional essay. It said 500 words but I assumed if I went a little over they wouldn't flip out. Now it says "your response exceeds the word limit. Please edit your response." </p>
<p>Will it cut me off if I save it anyway? It's about 8/9th's of a page when I make it 12 point Times New Roman and I use a lot of small words like "I."</p>
<p>Should I mail it in? Obviously the postmark date would be Nov. 2nd, but I'm sending in my research papers tomorrow as well so it wouldn't matter that much...</p>
<p>What should I do?</p>
<p>From what people said last year, I understood that over-the-limit essays aren't truncated, but they are printed in a smaller font on the final application.</p>
<p>Mollie: does that refer to just the actual essay (A or B), or to #13 and #14 as well? It seems like one of those is what sagar_indurkhya is talking about (for some reason, it seems like a lot of people on this site think of the last two questions as generic optional essays...). #13 and #14 say that the answer should be 500 words at the maximum, whereas the actual essay says that 500 words is just a guideline, so I'm not sure if #13 and #14 would allow more than that.</p>
<p>I'm just repeating what I heard -- when I applied, I applied on paper back in the dark ages when dinosaurs roamed the earth, et cetera. :)</p>