The short answers about elaborating on an extracurricular/work experience and your past two summers are supposed to be around 150 words, but the maximum you can enter is 250. Is it okay to go up to 250 if you have a lot of stuff to say, or will it look bad to go too high?
250 words won’t be appreciated but won’t get you an automatic rejection.
Regardless of how much you think you want to say, I guarantee that it can be said in 150 words or less.
Concise writing is a good thing to learn and now would be a great time to work on it. Good luck!
I would cut it down a bit, but a little over 150 should be fine. One of mine was 163 words, and the other was 148.
Yeah mine was a little bit over but I wouldn’t be too verbose — they’ve got a lot of other stuff to read!
You should try your best to keep it under 150 words, its completely doable and its what they recommend.
I was accepted SCEA and both my short answer responses were around 250 words. In hindsight, I probably could have cut down a few words, but it clearly will not be a death sentence to go over 200 words.
Going over the word limit is not advisable.
It’s fine — they have the 250 words maximum for a reason. Since it says approximately 150, 250 is fine.
I was admitted SCEA this year, and all of my responses were near the maximum possible word counts.
It’s too late for you now, but if anyone is reading this in the future, I called the admissions office on the phone and they said to keep it under 150 words because it sometimes gets cut off if it goes over 150 words.
@above that literally makes no sense but I’ll take your word for it. I assume the person you called was confused.
^^ Actually, that makes perfect sense to me, as the Common Application often cuts students off at the 151st word. Students need to preview a pdf of their application to make sure EVERY word is printable.
My suggestion: EDIT, CUT, DELETE, as I’ve NEVER read a student’s essay that couldn’t be shortened.
For example, My son and daughter, who applied five and six year ago to Princeton, answered the question in less than 150 words, which at the time was the maxim allowed – so you should try to do the same. Here’s what they said and I’m sure you could edit your response to the same length. Please keep in mind that Admissions has seen these responses, so an applicant should not copy a word, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, or an idea, as that would be considered plagiarism.
DAUGHTER’S 150 WORD RESPONSE ON AN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITY
SON’S 150 WORD RESPONSE ON AN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITY
Son accepted SCEA, both about 235 words, both answers strong and concise I thought.
There’s a difference between world limit x and about x. Word limit is a hard limit. But if you mouse over the questions that said about I believe it showed “word limit: 250.”
Reminds me of the old saying “If I’d have had more time, I would have made it shorter.”