<p>mine was 676 :)</p>
<p>I was talking with my high-achieving friends and our counselor, and it seems like for Ivies, 800 words is the minimum for them… I don’t know how I’m going to squeeze out 800 words from my extremely boring life…</p>
<p>800 is not a minimum. 250 is a minimum. 500-800 is an accepted range, and I can assure you no admissions officer will appreciate a lengthier essay for length’s sake.</p>
<p>I have heard many times to keep it in the 500-700 range. Mine was ~900, and I was worried. However, I have heard back from two LACs who mentioned that they enjoyed my essay. Apparently it didn’t read long. So really my point is…don’t worry about it. Get your college counselor or English teacher to read over it. Try to shorten it as much as possible so it’s concise, but then just relax about it! If your essay is good, then it won’t read long even if it is 800-1000 words.</p>
<p>Mine is about a 730 right now. Is that too long? I am not applying to any highly selective schools on the CA. I’m pretty sure they are all above 60% acceptance rate.</p>
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<p>Um, 800 is definitely NOT the minimum… in fact, the ideal range would be somewhere around 500-700 (like a few other posters have reiterated).</p>
<p>My daughter’s is 850 ish words and it seems good. She had a college counselor check it first.</p>
<p>mine is 780 words</p>
<p>Of course, I’m not saying that anything above 700 words or below 500 words is necessarily bad. I’ve just found that most essays can often convey a succinct, effective message if they stayed within that range. My own first draft was well over 800 words but I eventually managed to cut it down to under 700 (672, to be precise).</p>
<p>My initial rough draft for the essay was about 760/770, but I cut it down to 690ish. This is practically the final draft, just going to scan over it a few times. Tip (that a lot of people forget): try to remove most of the telling and keep the showing when editing, that helped me out.</p>
<p>My essay is 580 words.</p>
<p>499 exactly. I wanted to cut it down for Yale.</p>
<p>just so you all know, Yale is fairly strict about it not being much longer than 500 words…they mention in several places on their website about how one “will not be rewarded” for going over the limit… :/</p>
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<p>Good thing I didn’t apply to Yale then. :)</p>
<p>Thankfully, it was easy for me to keep them short for Yale. My supplement is less than 400 words.</p>
<p>I cut my essay down from 1100 to 720 words. Still looking to cut more out, but I think that I’ve made my point as concisely as possible.
I think that most people’s essays are around 600 words.</p>
<p>Recommended length of essays should be around 1-2 pages. maximum 2.
Make sure you are using standard size of 11 or 12 (Times New Roman/Arial/Calibri etc…),
with reasonable spacing.</p>
<p>It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s just a guideline…
also, make sure they won’t lose interest before they turn to the next page.</p>
<p>My essay is 1200 words, or exactly 2 page single spaced with 12 point font. However, it is a very easy read due to the nature of the essay (it basically talks about a lot of things for just a paragraph each), so I hope that the length will not be an issue.</p>
<p>kandalf–
The conventional wisdom is that 1200 words is too long. Any chance you could talk about a few less of your “lot of things?”</p>
<p>Uhhh mine was 1400. I thought everyones was that long?</p>