The essays weren’t over the word count. They were cut off when copy and pasted. This was an issue for many—a glitch between Word/Docs and Common App—and was discussed here somewhere.
If 23 had this same thing happen for other schools…I don’t even know what to say.
The schools have probably made their decisions, because they come out in 2-4 days.
I just found this forum thread about truncated essays. I’ll link to the thread for any future people who might want to know about this issue:
The information I found in the NYT is from 12 years ago so I won’t bother linking to that article.