<p>Some of my schools want a 1000-word statement, others a 500-word statement, so I'm cutting the 1000-word statement in half (ouch!).</p>
<p>What should I read into that word "approximately"? What if I submitted a succinct and tightly phrased 600 words? What about 550, or 530?</p>
<p>You can see that it's paining me to delete the carefully crafted sentences from my long version. :)</p>
<p>Grateful for your thoughts, all.</p>
<p>If the directions say "approximately 500" then 600 should be ok, IMHO.</p>
<p>When 500 is stated as the maximum (not the approximation), I know some committee members who wouldn't blink at 600. I also know some committee members who would immediately assume that the writer of a 600 word statement cannot follow directions.</p>
<p>Thanks very much, as always, Professor X.</p>
<p>Thats great to hear. I sent off my thousand word maximum essay with a little over 1150 words. I started to reconsider, but if a department is so finicky over something like an application, I can only imagine how bad they would be with all the other administrative details that would pop up through the course of a Phd.</p>
<p>Yeah, I'd typically stay within 150 words.</p>
<p>Yea, "approximate" roughly means 10% at most since its a rough threshold for eyeballing length heh. Also be warned that when they don't state the "approximate" length, they may simply cutoff words from your document or plaintext form after submission.</p>
<p>Unrelated
For one school, I had to prune my 1000 word sop to 500. It basically went from elaborate and descriptive to pithy and pretty bare ;(</p>