<p>How long was yours? </p>
<p>Is this a standard common app essay of about 500 words? Are more words allowed/discouraged? (With the premise that this is a very good essay.)</p>
<p>Thanks, guys.</p>
<p>I think it’d be clever if someone’s were 217 words long XD
But mine was 519. I recycled an essay I wrote for another college.</p>
<p>I don’t think UPenn would check the word count though unless you specifically drew it to their attention, but that would be kind of awkward.</p>
<p>No, I didn’t think so either.</p>
<p>but you need to keep it under a page, i think</p>
<p>Mine was 617 words, one page single-spaced. And of course it’s under a page, since it is “page 217”, not 2 pages of “pages 217-218”.</p>
<p>haha touche my friend^^</p>
<p>mines a page double spaced. I mean most books aren’t 8.5 x 11 so I figured it would be too big anyway if it was a whole page single spaced. but i guess its really up to each reader</p>
<p>mine was more than a page. 1.5 actually! i mean i totally get the whole 217 so 1 page thing but it can be a bigger book u know? well it worked i think :-)</p>
<p>lol you guys are taking it TOO literally 
just write whatever feels good. I generally try to keep my essays as close to 500 as possible though. Seems like the magic number.</p>
<p>Yeah…I was wondering about the same thing…Should we single-space the optional essay since it’s suppose to be ONE PAGE (or do you guys interpret it as one page in a bigger/smaller book so the word limit doesn’t matter)? But single space just looks…suffocating…</p>
<p>it seems like on the common app that there is more space available than just a page…probably 1.25 pages, i think</p>
<p>There’s no word limit on the common app, aside from “no less than 250 words.”</p>