I was doing my common app when I encountered this problem:
My personal statement/essay have a word count of 854, and when I saw the box for putting the essay in the common app site they told me that the cap is 500, so I chopped it down to 490 (yuck).
But the problem came when I previewed my app and saw that there’s a LOT more space, namely this:
“Personal Statement (essay) field displays a maximum of approximately 1800 characters.”
Does it vary by college? Or common app controls this? Will I chopped off if I give them 854 words?
<p>the website doesn't cut you off- but you should keep it as close to 500 words as you can. colleges will probably read it, but they will notice that it's way too long and that you weren't following the instructions. hope this helps.</p>
<p>Yeah you get a whole page I think, but you should probably stick close to the 500 words. I'm cutting mine down to around 600, which is reasonable I think.</p>
<p>But I think I'm gonna risk it and leave it 854 because my essay just doesn't look the same, can anybody list the bad (or worst) consequence(s) for this action? To sway me even more?</p>
<p>I think you should talk to the colleges. My essay is 780 words long, and both colleges told me that the length is fine. They said that they would rather not have a student sacrifice quantity when trying to cut down on the length.</p>