<p>Both Amherst and Williams have 300-word counts for their supplemental essays, and I wrote about 270-word essays for both at them. But I've gotten advice says that the essays have to be "at least a page" and that "no one cares about the word limit." Would it matter if I wrote significantly more than 300 words on each supplemental essay?</p>
<p>I think it would matter. If you wrote 270 words, just turn them in.</p>
<p>You definitely should not write more, at least for Williams. When I visited they actually told us specifically that they do not want people going over the limits on their essays!</p>
<p>Did you get the point of your essays across in 270 words? Then I’d say to send them in. If they were shortened from an original essay that was SLIGHTLY over 300 words (less than 340), then you can submit the original. I think what they mean by “no one cares about the word limit” is that 300 words means 250-350 words.</p>
<p>Don’t send anything significantly over 300 words if they only wanted a 300-word essay. For starters, that’s rude. Second of all, it makes you look stupid, like you didn’t put enough effort into the essay to read the instructions for it, including the word limit. Third, if I were an admissions counselor that had to go through thousands of applications, I wouldn’t want to read extremely long essays. That would slow down the admissions process because each application would take longer to read.</p>