<p>Our son has been trying to submit his supplemental application to Oberlin for an hour now and it tells him the essay is over the character limit. But his essay, in fact, is under the character limit!</p>
<p>Arggggghh!</p>
<p>Anyone else having this problem? Suggestions? The deadline is in three hours.</p>
<p>It was the Oberlin Common App. supplement site and he cut four words to get it to 500 words and it went through. But it was already well below the 3,000-character limit.</p>
<p>3,000 characters generally equal 500 words, I think.</p>
<p>A bit late, but my supplement was also said to be over the limit. I asked my admissions rep if there was a preferred length, and she suggested a page or so. I had 3 pages at the time, so it was hard enough to get it down to only 1 page. My essay was 5000 characters, hah, but I didn't realize that was a character limit on the CommonApp. When the character limit was still exceeded, I just mailed it because there was no way I could get rid of anything else.</p>