<p>On the Common App it says to answer the Why question in a paragraph or two, but I feel like this would be a really short response. What length did you guys write? Sorry if this is a really dumb question, I'm just freaking out a little.haha</p>
<p>I wrote 519 words, or about 4 long paragraphs.</p>
<p>My son’s was a little over 300 words.</p>
<p>Mine’s around 900 words, but it’s a narrative, not a conventional essay.</p>
<p>257 (accepted EA)</p>
<p>351 words.</p>
<p>(accepted EA)</p>
<p>196 words (accepted EA).</p>
<p>You guys that got accepted EA only wrote 200-350 ish words?? Mine Why Chicago essay is like 2 and a half pages double spaced… Oh dear Lord I better cut it down then ><</p>
<p>mine’s 420… a little lengthier than they probably wanted… but I can’t cut it down very much without losing character.</p>
<p>its just in two very long paragraphs</p>
<p>A few people on here have been accepted with 12 paragraph, 3 page essays. It seems they are pretty lenient about it so if you feel everything in your essay is necessary I wouldn’t worry about cutting it down.</p>
<p>thanks secret asian man. Wow. 3 pages is daunting. I should get to work eh.</p>
<p>I would say 1-2 paragraphs, like the prompt instructs, cannot be more than 400-500 words (mine’s only 320). I personally wouldn’t advise people that the Chicago admissions officers are lenient on this length, it states very clearly that its a short essay, 1-2 paragraphs. I think that 900 words is definitely pushing it, even for the long essay.</p>
<p>Mine was 151 words (accepted EA).</p>
<p>500-ish (EA). But I don’t think they care about the length.</p>
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<p>It’s not about how much you write 
Being sincere will get you further than being long winded. </p>
<p>I would also tend to agree with the others who have advised adhering to the 1-2 paragraph instruction.</p>
<p>120 (accepted ea)</p>
<p>460 words (accepted EA). And my “long” essay was only 525 words. The essays are important to Chicago, but that doesn’t mean they want to see novels; if you have a single paragraph you’re really happy with, you’re probably just going to make it worse by trying to make it look longer. I’d suggest that if your “why” essay is longer than a page (mine was a few lines over) to very seriously see what you can take out. Then again, if you have a great two pages, by all means, they’ll accept that too. :)</p>
<p>My ‘Why Chicago’ is ~280 words; my supposedly ‘long’ essay is ~440 words. I’m actually pretty content with them. Concise but (hopefully) get the point across.</p>
<p>Ack, my long essay is currently 834 words, do you think that is too long? I think it’s defintely on the long side, but I hope it’s not long enough to warrant sighs from the admissions officers.</p>
<p>Mine was 1200 and I think I saw some on here upward of 2000+</p>
<p>As long as it flows well and is coherent, I don’t think they care about length. They’re looking for your voice and who you are as a person, and if you need a long essay to accomplish that, great. Go look at some of the essays in the “Post Your Essay” thread a few pages back, many of them are monsters.</p>