<p>Is the 150 word limit for this question a hard and fast rule? I know they say that succinct essays are the most effective, but I might need 200 - 225 words for my essay for its full impact.</p>
<p>Do they cut it off at the 150 word mark, or do they let you paste extra words into the box?</p>
<p>I think most people would suggest you try really hard to stick to the word limit. I don’t know if it’ll cut your essay off, but this will be a good exercise for you.</p>
<p>^I think they that when they give a limit, they want you to abide by it. </p>
<p>We noticed that the character limits throughout the Common App changed significantly since 2 years ago when older brother applied! Older brother wrote about 2 and 1/2 pages of “Additional Information.” This year, it’s limited to 1000 characters, which amounted to two fairly small paragraphs!</p>
<p>I’m guessing that, since the number of applications has gone up astronomically, admissions folks are trying to limit how much they have to read for each candidate. They’re figuring (I’m guessing) that students should be able to fit the “meat” of their applications into a certain number of characters.</p>
<p>And I think that’s fair enough. Whenever applying for anything, one should do what they can to follow the directions.</p>
<p>As the Yale adcom said at his presentation the other night – my boss, who is an accomplished Dean of one of the best schools in the world, has a one-page resume. We expect that our high school applicants can manage to squeeze their accomplishments into one page as well. Very good point! :)</p>
<p>Keep it in the word limit. Also, check the “preview” to see if anything is cut off, as that is what admissions officers will see (note: make sure you do this for everything, including activity descriptions, as even sentences within the limit can be cut off).</p>
<p>Looks good</p>