Honors Program Essay

The Honors program application says to submit a “300-word essay”. Does it have to be EXACTLY 300 words?

Mine was exactly 300 words but I doubt the admissions people are going to actually count if you have exactly 300, unless they don’t have anything better to do with their lives

why would they count? why not look on the bottom-left of the screen of msword lol
or even putting your essay in a word free word counter online, its takes about 5sec