<p>At the info session i was just recently at Catalina Gusman, senior VP of admissions (or something like that), REALL REALLY REALLY stressed (i mean she said it like 5 times and made the audience repeat it twice) that the application essays should be one page. Setting up my why penn essay i realized that i could write an outstanding essay with about 1.5-1.75 pages compared to the good essay i could write with one page. Should i write 2 pages if my essay will be MUCH stronger??? How many pages were yours?</p>
<p>Mine was a page, but it was single-spaced, 1" margins, and 11 pt font. Unless your essay is going to be absolutely fascinating, keep it to a page or they might not want to go on.</p>
<p>^^Single Spaced? Thats a LOT.</p>
<p>writing excellent concise essays is a rather essential skill - you should not need two pages to fit in everything you want to say (if it runs over by a little, that's tweakable, but a full two pages is too much)</p>
<p>Not particularly. I think mine were 600-something words. Maybe a little long, but I think in the 500s is definitely reasonable because that's the guideline given on the Common App. I couldn't fit 500 with double spacing..so single-spaced!</p>
<p>mine was about 870 words, 11pt font, and .92 margins</p>
<p>You really should get it onto one page. At first mine was about 800 words, but I managed to get it down to the 600s. Editing is important, and if that person REALLY stressed that it be on one page, I would follow that... Shrink the font (I wouldn't go past 10 though), change the font name, or widen the margins to make more room.</p>
<p>Why Penn should have an opening paragraph, 3-5 body paragraphs on different aspects of Penn, and a short conclusion. No reason that can't fit on a single spaced page.</p>
<p>My Why Penn essay was way too long at first. It wouldn't even fit into the text field on the online application, so I had to cut it down to 5000 characters, or 800 words, which filled about 1.5 pages size 12 single spaced. Don't worry about it being too long as long as you make sure you have a lot of good content, and someone else can probably judge that more objectively than you can, so get someone to help you out.</p>