<p>... the essay requirements said to limit myself to one page, and I decreased the margins?</p>
<p>Immediate discarding? Major fail? Would admissions officers notice?</p>
<p>Doesn't hurt to ask. :)</p>
<p>Depends on how egregious it is. 1" margins are fine, I think, but any further is kind of pushing it. I hope the font size wasn’t below 12.</p>
<p>Aha. No, I’m sticking by the standard Times New Roman 12 and Word 2007 default, which is 1 inch margins, with 1.15 spacing. </p>
<p>I guess I have to cut down, then. Thank you for the answer!</p>
<p>Standard is 12 pt Times New Roman with one-inch margins. Don’t try to be clever: They’ll see right through it.</p>
<p>Well… hilariously enough… when I read application essays, they were almost never given to me in their original format. The staff had redone the formatting and font and everything, so there was no way I could tell whether something was too long or too short… at the margins (no pun intended). But if something was terribly long or terribly short, I definitely noticed it.</p>
<p>Better late than never – flowerhead, thanks for your comments :-)</p>