<p>So I wrote to my regional williams adcom:
"Hello,
I'm a current applicant to Williams.I have a question about the supplement essay: I've written mine, and though I've spent tons of time editing I can't get it down to 300 words. It's currently at 350 words. Is this acceptable, or do I have to find a way to shorten it in order to not damage my admissions chances?"</p>
<p>She replied,
"send it as is!" </p>
<p>Thought this might be helpful to someone else freaking about the 300 word limit's strictness.</p>
<p>Thank you for posting this. On the Common Application some of the space blocks for short answers DO have a hard cut-off-- I recall that Yale’s 25 words answers meant just that–but in general Ad Coms will get a bit upset if you go WAY beyond a word limit–also, the reader will want to know what it was that you needed to write with of those extra words.</p>
<p>I am a reader for a national well known fellowship and I can recall only one time that we dunned the applicant for going above the limit–it was an egregious violation and there seemed to have other data that the applicant had a hard time with ego issues–we felt that the long, long essay was indicative of this. </p>
<p>So – and I recognize with just a couple of days to go-- chill. the reader wants to get a sense of who you are and how you think. Of course, no excuse for spelling or grammar mistakes!!</p>