Just had an experience of helping my kid to shorten his essay from about 850 words originally (colorful and charming narrative with several main points) to 650 for the Common App (lost some of the charm and ideas but retained others) to 250 for a supplement to a college which doesn’t use Common App (still tries to retain the narrative feel and gets the point across, but not much more). I think I really hate the word limits after this exercise (as opposed to general guidelines which don’t require you to try and cut all traces of personal style) .