<p>This sucks. The online application says my essays are 20-30 characters more than what Word says. Word doesn't count empty space, I guess. Should I combine everything into one paragraph, or just change the wording?</p>
<p>are you going over the limits?
if not dont worry about it, they arent going to count.</p>
<p>I am having the worst time with the character limit. According to Word, my essay is 1499 characters, but in the box, it's 1509. My essay is already so bare as it. AHH! I didn't think they were going to be so strict. :(</p>
<p>Tip: make sure to delete the spaces at the end of the last sentence of a paragraph.</p>
<p>You can also cut some characters by only having one space after periods and colons instead of two.</p>
<p>The one space is actually the new MLA proper formatting just fyi. Maybe try to restructure sentences a bit... semicolons could help cut out a word or two here and there. And to a print preview to see if the extra characters are actually cut off. You can say "save and proceed to submission" and not actually submit it. There are a couple of steps more before it's submitted. View the application and see if it's actually a problem.</p>
<p>Yeah, it's pretty crappy, but I'm finding ways to skimp down. On the roommate essay I went from 1420 to 1299 characters. That scared me a bit. At least I have tomorrow to read everything again and see if it sounds good.</p>
<p>What is the limit for those essays? I did the paper app.</p>
<p>Less is probably better anyway, provided that you get your point across... and 120 characters really isn't that much!</p>
<p>120!? Okay, someone has to tell me the exact limits for the shorts and the long before I flip out and decide I'll automatically get rejected because mine were too long.</p>
<p>The limits for the online application were 1500 characters for the first two short essays and 1400 for the roomate one. For the long essay, it was 5100 characters. </p>
<p>jellybean24- if you did it through paper, it doesn't really matter if you can fit it between the spaces given. They will not count the characters to see if it is below the limit. As long as it fits in the space given and isn't size 6 font, you will be fine.</p>
<p>Wow, I'm glad I'm doing the paper application... all my essays are just slightly over those limits. I would hate to have to trim them more.</p>
<p>Me too. Two of mine were under that, one was 50 over, and the roommate one was about 140 over. But they fit.</p>
<p>Man, I'm regretting applying online. I was seriously stressed out because my essay is so bare as is, and yet, it was still over the character limit! 120 characters may not seem like a lot, but that's one or two sentences that contribute to the main plot. Oh well, I'm all done! </p>
<p>I'll be praying for all of us.</p>