common app short (activities) essay: strict word limit??

Can anyone plse advise on whether its OK to go over the word limit?I read in this book on how to ace college apps that although there's a word limit "you can safely write one to one half pages". Does anyone know if you will get penalized for doing so? Plse help!

The Universities will see how you are ignoring the request at hand, and how you decided to be flexible enough with your essay and bend the rules. Universities may not look at this favorably, as you seemingly do not follow the laid out rules.

My advice: Stay within the word limit. It is the safer thing to do.

Thanks Liebe...drat..have to go work on shortening the essay then:)

Unless you are a brilliant writer whose essay will be so compelling that the admissions officer will not want to stop reading it, stay within the word limit. These folks have to read hundreds or thousands of essays; they do not appreciate having to spend even a few more minutes on an essay that is over-long. Even if they don't formally penalize you, their feelings of crankiness might hurt you.

Agreed! This is one of those times that you need to follow the format as answer the prompt.

thanks everyone for the input...nope, am not a brilliant writer so will def have to shorten the essay...

Merged:

concerning the word limit of reasons to transfer essay in Common App

Hi

The Common Application states that the essay for why you want to transfer has to be at least 250 words. So, I am wondering, what's considered the upper bound for this? Is approximately 500 OK?

please help

thanks

ya if it's at leat 250 words, betwen 500~600 words would be proper.
In other words, it's better to put everything in a sigle page.

Don't worry about the word count once you pass 250. Just say what you have to say as clearly, cleanly, and concisely as possible.

If no maximum is given, then in theory you can make it as long as you want. However, it seems unlikely that your reasons for transferring require much more than a page or so of explanation, and you should try to be as concise and to the point as possible. Applications officers have to read an awful lot of essays, and the last thing they want to see is one that goes on for three or four pages.