<p>Yale asks that it's supplementary secondary essay be limited to 500 words, but does this apply to the common app personal essay as well?</p>
<p>There are many posts on a similar topic on CC. It seems that the general agreement is that one should not exceed this 500 words limit by too much, but nobody seems to say that there is an absolute limit. If what you have to say <em>really</em> deserves the extra words, yous should go for it</p>
<p>For the supplement, stay as close to 500 as possible (since that’s the limit they gave you). For the common app, I’ve heard that 500ish is a good length. Not too short and not too long. I also heard that a good upper limit is 750 words, because even though they don’t give you a specific limit, the adcoms don’t want to sit around reading you paper forever!</p>
<p>I was at a Yale info session where, when asked this question, the adcom simply urged the students to try and limit (both) their essays to 500-750 words and said that more than 1000 would start creating a negative impression. But this was one admissions officer, others might have a lower threshold.</p>
<p>Eh… my Common App essay was about 600 words. My Yale supplement was “exactly” 500 words.</p>