<p>Three of the colleges I'm applying to are highly selective, but I feel that each one matches my needs, abilities, and personality very well. I think the fact that they are perfect fits for me is turning out to be kind of an issue because it's making my essays REALLY long. I've scoured each college's website and found so many things that I like and intend to get involved with in terms of academics and student life; incorporating all of them in the essay to explain why I want to transfer while sticking to one page of writing is virtually impossible.
I have like eight pages at the moment. Yeah, crazy. It's very rough, though. I started off with a page long introduction describing how I ended up at my current college, and a lot of the essay is superfluous; I could probably cut the whole thing down to four pages. But I don't think I could make it any shorter without omitting a lot of the littler reasons and specific facts behind my desire to transfer. Should I entirely get rid of the background and just discuss my two principal reasons for seeking the transfer instead of all five, thereby reducing the essay to two pages? Thanks.</p>
<p>8 pages is far too long. 4 pages is probably way too long as well. When discussing why you want to go to any of the schools you’re applying to you want to stay away from talking about your current school extensively. Also, I would suggest picking the few most important reasons for each school and cutting the essays down to around two pages. A shorter essay that focuses on what’s really important will have more of an impact.</p>
<p>This is from the downloaded CA Transfer application:</p>
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