<p>if your essay goes over the word/character limit, will it be truncated when read? or is this just a standard to make the lives easier for the admissions offices?</p>
<p>It’s just a standard (i think), but try to stay within or near the limit. Going over could possibly indicate your lack of instruction-taking skills.</p>
<p>Last year, it was truncated if typed directly into the form (that is, the form stopped accepting letters), but not if the essay was pasted in from another source, like MS Word (which is how most schools suggest doing it anyway so that you can spell check).</p>
<p>JMO: word limits are very important; character limits are not. Number of characters didn’t show up on the final PDF and it’s impossible to tell how many characters something is; word count is much easier to assess.</p>
<p>the whole text showed up on the website it said to send it to (gateway prep schools). would this mean it would be truncated or not if it exceeded the word limit?</p>
<p>We didn’t use gateway, but ours always showed up on the final form if it showed up on the website. The only caveat was that if my son tried to make any changes once it was in the online format, it would immediately truncate the essay. As long as he just pasted the final version in and didn’t make any changes, he was okay.</p>
<p>The parent statements are under the “Essays” tab on Gateway to Prep School. If you use “Print Review,” you can check the printed copy. I assume that’s what the schools will see.</p>