<p>It says 250-500. Not around 600 or any number above 500. Keep it below 500.</p>
<p>lol, trust me, if you go over a 100 words or so, you are fine. I submitted mine with 560 words.</p>
<p>Yeah I called admissions, they said around more than 500 is okay. But they said keep it close to 500. So yeah around 560-600 should be okay.</p>
<p>Matisyahu, where did you call?</p>
<p>Do you think around 620 would be okay?</p>
<p>succulentgirl - I called Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Washington University in St. Louis, Vanderbilt, Chicago (they don’t really care about limit), Northwestern.</p>
<p>And yes, I think that 620 will be okay. Try for 600 though.</p>
<p>I have 804 in mine, only because I have multiple bizarre circumstances to explain. In this essay, I discuss:
- The failure of nine surgeries affecting my first college choice
- Changing after I got a hearing aid, and discovering that I had more talents than just writing
- The freshman year from hell (which included chronic illness and my mother’s kidney transplant) explaining my school’s lack of support and my discovery that I am truly a writer.
- The ways in which I have been repeatedly failed by the creative writing department.
- Sexual harassment for being feminine and having different views on the feminist movement. Oh, and before anybody gives me flack for this one, a close friend on campus, who shares my fashion sense and opinions, gets this same harassment in spite of being gay. If you are perceived to be “unliberated” in any way, you get harassed. Horribly.
It’s been a long, complicated journey, and each piece is needed to explain why I want to transfer, and why my schools specifically.</p>
<p>If you feel like you must include all of the information in order to stress your reasons for transferring then yes, 804 is fine.
Technically the maximum is 500, but the admissions said that they won’t care too much if its like 50-80 words over. But then again, I’ve heard of people writing 1200+ word essays and getting into prestigious schools like Harvard and Yale.</p>
<p>Yea I would say over 500 hundred words would be fine. A transfer essay should be short and to the point. I just wrote about how my current school doesn’t have research opportunities and that I feel the school confines me to the city its in rather than letting me go else where. But the reason I was transferring was because of the price, but I couldn’t say “the school is to expensive” as my reason. So I had to improvise. Good Luck !!!</p>
<p>
</p>
<ol>
<li>I’ve heard a lot of things, but I don’t believe them all.</li>
<li>I’ve heard a lot of things, but I don’t necessarily believe that they all pertain to me and my situation.</li>
<li>IOW, I recommend using reason and staying within the guidelines as much as possible.</li>
</ol>
<p>No way can I go without explaining each of these circumstances. While we have high stress levels on-campus, even the deans and the HA’s have told me several times that I have one of the most bizarre and difficult life stories they have ever heard.</p>
<p>Yours isn’t over like 800 right?</p>
<p>Only if you discount the title. Without the title, it’s under 800. With it, the essay is 804.</p>
<p>^^JMO, in your posts you are coming across as thinking of yourself as special and different from anyone else. And some of your points have to do with the perceived disservice that others have “done to you” (#4&5). I won’t try to talk you out of this approach, because I think it is likely to fall on deaf ears, but I will say that it is not one I would advise taking.</p>
<p>For #4 and #5, I don’t think.
I know.
These disservices have been done to multiple people, not just me. #4 and #5 are two of the biggest reasons we have a low retention rate and a low ranking.
Multiple people have filed complaints about #4, and have been trying to get the department renovated for years. Even the deans don’t like the way the department is behaving, but they wants to pick a fight with those people because they are irrational.</p>
<h1>5 is one of the biggest hot buttons on-campus, and nobody has tried doing anything about it until recently. The people with whom I am friends are marginalized in the same way, and we are all sick of it. We repeatedly try going to the deans and HA’s, but barely anything is done about it. This problem defines 1/3 of the student body.</h1>
<p>If anything was done solely to me, I would just take action on campus and be fine. These problems, however, are done to multiple people each year and will not be solved in this era. It’s to the point where, especially on issue #4, I was encouraged to transfer by my dean.
Btw, every word in my essay counts. It’s not just fluff. It shows who I am and expresses why I want to transfer. This has been the review of 3 different editors.
Also, your comments will only fall on partially deaf ears. I’m not completely deaf yet.</p>
<p>I don’t think she was LITERALLY talking about your hearing-aid, more about your desire to keep a high word count.
But like I said, if you truly believe you need every word, then go for it.</p>
<p>Guys…
I have a problem…
I already submitted my common app but my essay was well over 500 words…
Do you think this is going to be a big hindrance for me?</p>
<p>Is it under 600? Then it is okay.
I called a lot of schools ranging from Northwestern - UNC. (rankwise)
They all said please keep it near 500. So around 550-600 would be okay.
Did you double space yours?</p>
<p>Yeah i double spaced… but its still more…
its like…
…
900…</p>
<p>ASEHGDAHDFGA ima cry :’[</p>
<p>Nothing you could do about it now. It’s sent.</p>
<p>If you still have other schools to apply, create an alternate version of the CA to revise your essay.</p>
<p>do you think its going to be severely detrimental?</p>