Question about essay length

So I wrote my essay for University of Florida. The instructions says:Please submit an approximately 3980 character (400-500 word) essay.
My essay is only ~3000 characters, but already 530 words. I am guessing the character limit precedes the word count. Should I just replace words with bigger ones? I have 32 uses of “I”, maybe there is a way I can get rid of them or replace them so increase characters?

Well, 32 uses of the same word, out of 530, could be a problem.