<p>In college admissions essays, how many words over the limit would you still be comfortable in submitting? For a 500 word-er? For a 250?</p>
<p>None. You can always edit the work to fit in the space.</p>
<p>I personally would want to rein in the Common App essay at below 600 (preferably as close to 500 as possible).</p>
<p>For other essays, it depends. Yale’s supplement says “no more than 500 words” (or something to that effect), so you shouldn’t go over. Princeton’s supplement, on the other hand, says “about 500 words,” so you have some flexibility, but you still don’t want to go too far over.</p>
<p>I disagree that you necessarily have to be within every limit. Some, like Princeton’s, are not saying you have to do that, and it has been said that the Common App is not hard-limited at 500. But if nothing suggests that you can go over, I would avoid doing so.</p>
<p>On a 500? 450.</p>
<p>I have the same problem here. They said max is 1000 but i wanna go beyond that because I feel like I still have a lot to say, but I guess I shouldn’t break the rule.</p>
<p>how important are the words that feel as though you “must” write? My bet is no more than 10% over, the limit exists for a reason. On the other hand, getting an essay exactly on the limit buys you no brownie points and I doubt having it under would either. spend enough time that you finish the essay.</p>
<p>trying to stay within a 99 word range of their suggestion</p>
<p>i had like 496 on a 500 word limit. the most important thing is that you don’t go ANY words past 499, because the point is to see if you can follow directions:)</p>
<p>oops sorry, i meant past 500. but thats just my opinion, still…</p>
<p>If you REALLY REALLY REALLY can’t chop at it anymore, I think going over ~10 words will be totally fine. Dude, colleges aren’t going to sit there and count every single word for what, 50,000+ applicants?</p>
<p>I talked with my college counselor about it. For the 500 words essay on the Common App, at least, she said it’s okay to go over, but to keep in under 100 extra words.</p>
<p>“I personally would want to rein in the Common App essay at below 600 (preferably as close to 500 as possible).”</p>
<p>There is no hard and fast rule, but I agree - keep it under 600.</p>
<p>A lot of times they want to see that you can write clearly and concisely, and not go off on a tangent. You also need to express good judgment that what you are writing about is really important and going to interest them. Once students start going over the limits, they have an urge to include <em>this</em> and <em>that</em> hoping that something will spark interest in the reader. I wouldn’t risk more than a few words over the limit.</p>
<p>thehungrynamu - For electronic applications, all they have to do is open your document and go to tools, “word count,” and in a few seconds they can see if you followed directions. I doubt they would bother to actually do this unless it was obvious that you were over, in which case they might discard you for not being able to follow directions. The longer your essay, the more time it takes them to read through all of the applications and make decisions.</p>
<p>Alot of times the Common App will NOT let you exceed the max…it accepts a set amount of characters per box, so edit edit edit</p>
<p>I agree with the above advice – I think there are very few 700 word essays that cannot be edited down to 500 words </p>
<p>In virtually all cases, the 500 word result will be better.</p>
<p>My CA essay started at 800 for the first draft, 900 for the second, 700 for the third, and now I’m at 570 and I dont think I’ll go much further.</p>