<p>MIT's website says it best with we don't care if you go a little over 500, but 1,000 would be a different story. I'd set 750 as an ABSOLUTE limit. given that those extra 250 words are necessary in the essays development.</p>
<p>why don't you send the essay to a couple of us and we'll tell you what's up?</p>
<p>Here is my advice on length of essays, as a parent and as someone whose livelihood depends on writing in a way that people will read it and hopefully agree.</p>
<p>One can never be sure what weight an admissions officer will put on an essay or on many other components of an application.</p>
<p>However, before sending in that essay, try to put yourself in the place of an admissions officer who has been reading college applications steadily for a month or two, working late sometimes, trying to be fair, and is picking up your application and essay one night about 10 PM or so (yes, it could be your application at that point). Will he or she be happy to see a long essay or will he or she be more likely to groan, or at least sigh?</p>
<p>lmao what adcom reads essays at 10pm. its a 9-5 thing.</p>
<p>What the heck?
All common app people take only 1 essay right? My counselor says i need to write a 500 word one on one of the topics, and a 1000 word 1.
Is that wrong.
I already wrote the 500 (more like 580 i think)</p>
<p>Common app. requires one essay of about 500 words. Some schools require supplemental essays, which is where I am guessing your counselor is pulling the 1000 word essay from.</p>
<p>They take home essays to read, and then talk about the files the next day in committees so they very well could be reading yours at 10 PM OR later. You know the officers at top schools have a great work ethic, they're working just as hard on admission's as the kids applying. You can't expect them to be 100% at all hours, they have A LOT of applicants to go through.</p>
<p>i had 989 words in my "why Northwestern" essay and i was accepted.</p>
<p>they get paid crap for what the do..and yet they would bring essays home to read? haven't they had enough? the vote for admitting any one person is unanimous, one person would bring it home to read. that essay could potentially be tampered with. unless you've seen this done yourself? i can't believe that.</p>
<p>i had 816 for NYU - Stern...admitted. i really feel you simply shouldn't go over a page.</p>
<p>Well you know how there are about 5 or so prompts, and my counselor said pick 2 and write 1000 on one and 500 on the other.
But thats stupid since you only send one, and they are only the common app ones. Not Specific ones for specific colleges.</p>
<p>What about that? Why should i write a normal common app essay at 500 and one at 1000</p>
<p>do you go to a competitive high school? i don't think your counselor knows what she's talking about. why would you need to write two essays if you're only submitting one? most elite schools require their an additional essay found in the supplement to the common app. if you don't have one, then don't write two. to be honest, i think 500 words is a tad short. i would aim for 550.</p>
<p>mines about 600. Its not a school counselor. Its a privately hired one. I just dont get why he would want a 1000 word one. But i already did 600 on academic interest, and im not gonna do another one because i couldnt even write 300 on the other topics. I have no passion/influence/or motivation with them. I was gonna do on my dad, but i can't put into words his impact on my life, other than that, he just does because he is my dad.</p>
<p>lol you're one of the thousands of students who are having trouble with this. your privately hired counselor probably wants you to write two essays so he or she can pick/edit the better one and want you to do excess work so that if you don't, you can't complain about the price you paid her after you get rejected from those ivies because you haven't done all that was asked.</p>
<p>anything over 400 would be too much for a 250 word essay. period. they limit it to that much because they only want to read that much. the whole point is telling them as much about yourself as you can in that limit.</p>
<p>it is not a 250 limit. It is a 250 min.</p>
<p>The rule I always used for essays was this: a) short essays - add 10% to the word count limit (e.g. 250 words would get 275 maximum). b) Long Essays - add 20% to the word count limit (e.g. 500 words would get 600 maximum). I think that works pretty well.</p>
<p>an admissions rep would fall asleep on page 5....cut it to no more than 3 pages.</p>
<p>you do realize you would probably even get cut off before 3 pages. 1500words is 3 pages, which is way too much</p>
<p>Think of the adcoms that have to go through 1,000s of essays .. for their sake, keep it to one page.</p>