<p>this is probably a really neurotic question, but the word limit for the supplement essay is 300, and i'm at 319. how strictly do you think they expect us to follow the limit? is there any flexibility?</p>
<p>It probably won’t take more than 300–keep cutting.</p>
<p>319 should be fine. Make sure that it’s not excess though.</p>
<p>Concise, clear writing will trump flowery, abstract writing. They want to know more about you. Every word should promote your idea.</p>
<p>The problem is that that the common app software may just not accept an over-length essay. I know that we ran into that.</p>
<p>it’s one of the “upload document” things, and common app can only really cut you off if there’s a character limit. so for the record, it did submit.</p>
<p>Mine was at 320, then I had a friend help me cut extraneous bits… and it was still at 306. It just takes some re-wording sometimes. Finally got down to 300 :)</p>
<p>The general rule is word limit + 10% should be OK–so anything under 330 is probably fine and I doubt they’d be able to see the difference. That being said, when you don’t follow their requirements you are taking a small risk.</p>