<p>On the Profile questions, it says to "Respond in two lines or less" but then the box has 300 characters available in which to type your answers...Should I use all 300 characters and go beyond two lines, or do I only write enough for two lines?</p>
<p>Here's what it looks like:
<a href="http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/9061/screenshot20120803at107.jpg%5B/url%5D">http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/9061/screenshot20120803at107.jpg</a></p>
<p>I would follow Stanford’s instructions rather than the character limit on CommonApp. On top of that, your answer shouldn’t be massively long; you don’t need complete sentences, so you can simply list your responses.</p>
<p>Look at the print preview and see if it’s longer than two lines.</p>
<p>I used the 300 character limit when I filled in my application. Just be concise and it should be fine.</p>
<p>^Were you accepted/did you previously apply, or are you applying this year?</p>
<p>Two lines seems kind of sparse. I don’t know how I’m supposed to list my favorite books, authors, films, and musicians in just two lines. I did it just fine in under 300 chars, but still.</p>
<p>I am Stanford Class of 2016.</p>
<p>For the first question (I think they asked for books, authors, films and music), I used one line for each option to list all my favourites and my response was barely below 300 words. For the second question (list newspapers and websites?), I also listed a lot of websites I like, so the response is definitely beyond 2 lines. I used two or three pretty long sentences to answer the next few responses, and just listed 5 words for the last question (list 5 words to describe yourself). </p>
<p>I think it’s fine if you exceed by a bit (or by a lot) as long as you can submit your application (therefore, it must have fewer than 300 characters per response). In my personal opinion, all you need to do is to ensure that it does not have redundant information. For example, although my top 5 favourite books are all Science books, I listed representative books from my top 20 list because I want to show that I am interested in other areas too. I thought that one Science book is enough to show my interest in Science. </p>
<p>Note that that’s only my personal experience and it does not dictate what you should do. If you think you want to list 5 (or 10) Science books because that shows who you are, go ahead. If you want to list just one book but describe in detail why you like it, that works as well. If you want to ensure that all your responses are at most 2 lines long, you can do that too (I have a friend who did that, and we will be going to Stanford together this year). </p>
<p>In short, all instructions, unless enforced, are just guidelines.</p>
<p>^Good to know. I shouldn’t have much of a problem staying within two lines for most of the questions, with the exception of the first one.</p>
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<pre><code> Amen…
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