<p>I'm wondering, how strict are the UCs about the word limits? </p>
<p>My 600 word essay shows up as 613 words on the application. (It was 606 on Microsoft Word, but that's a whole 'nother story...)</p>
<p>One of my 200 word essays is 217 words.</p>
<p>I haven't finished my third one (200 words) yet.</p>
<p>Should I be paranoid? I've cut as much as I possibly can. My sister tells me that the word limit is in place only so people don't submit entire novels to them, so I shouldn't be too paranoid. But I'm still paranoid. How strict are they?</p>
<p>Well, if you were an adcom and had thousands of essays to read, you wouldn't be too thrilled about people going over the limit, BUT, in your case, it's only about 20 words extra per essay, and that's only about a sentence. If it's absolutely cruicial to the essay and you can't cut anymore without totally ruining all your hard work, just leave em. If your essay is really good, a few extra words won't hurt; if it's the worst thing you've ever written, no amount of words taken out can change that. If you can get rid of them, do, but if you can't, don't sweat it. If you were 75 words over, then I'd worry.</p>