Admissions Office Says Not To Fret Over Common App Word Limit

For high school seniors completing the Common Application, the new 500-word limit on the personal statement can feel constraining and anxiety-provoking.

“Some students take it very literally,” said Amy Sack, president of admissions consulting company Admissions Accomplished. “If they’re at 501 they become crazy.”

But Harvard’s stance on the word limit should give concerned students cause to relax.

“I think in our situation if people happen to go over 500 words, that’s fine with us,” Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 told The Crimson. “And if they want to use our supplement and send almost anything they can imagine, we’re happy to read that too ... It’s really not an issue for us.”

Though the Common Application instructs students not to submit essays that are longer than 500 words, the online tool does not limit them from doing so.

“If a student uploaded a 500,000-word essay, there’s nothing we could do,” Rob Killion, executive director of Common Application told the New York Times. “However, we do ask that all students follow the same rules their peers are following.”

Harvard’s supplement encourages students with exceptional talents to submit extra materials such as copies of art work, music recordings, and academic papers. The Admissions Office will forward this supplementary material to members of the faculty if the applicant is being seriously considered, according to Fitzsimmons.

Views on the word limit vary among admissions counselors, according to Michael Goran, director and educational consultant at college counseling firm IvySelect.

“I counsel [students] to keep it in one page,” said Sack. “The computer can count characters. An admissions officer is not going to count your words but does not want to read on forever.”

Goran agreed with this sentiment.

“The point is that they’re not counting but they certainly are going to have a sense of when you’re going way over,” said Goran, who said that his students rarely complete drafts of their essays that are under 500 words.

“They’re not purposefully trying to write over the limit, but I think that going slightly beyond 500 adds texture,” said Goran. “I wish they would give some more latitude there for students to write more.”

Yale Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel told the New York Times that he would continue reading long essays, but that “if they go over the limit, the stakes go up.”

Asked whether his office continues to read excessively long essays, Fitzsimmons grinned and nodded.“We will keep reading,” he said. “We will. We do.”

—Staff writer Justin C. Worland can be reached at jworland@college.harvard.edu.