The New York Times
By MATT FLEGENHEIMER
Published: October 28, 2011
Penn Weinberger had grown attached to his college admissions essay. The topic — coping with a brother’s attention deficit disorder — was important to him. The anecdotes clicked. The characters had dimension. The meaning, as his teachers at Hunter College High School had long advised him, was shown, not told.
The only problem with Penn’s writing was the math: It was 650 words, outside the 250- to 500-word range re-established by the Common Application this spring — after a four-year experiment with no upper limit — but only now being grappled with as deadlines for early admissions approach next week.
“I just had to chop down all the emotion,” Penn said.
Unlike other parts of the application, which, in its online version, cuts students off midword if they exceed character limits, the personal statement will not be truncated, raising the question in school corridors: Does 500 really mean 500?
In a word, no. In two words, kind of.
“If a student uploaded a 500,000-word essay, there’s nothing we could do,” said Rob Killion, executive director of Common Application, which is accepted by more than 400 colleges and universities. “However, we do ask that all students follow the same rules their peers are following.”
Mr. Killion said the limit was reinstated after feedback that essays had grown too long. But colleges are not told if essays exceed the limit.
Jon Reider, director of college counseling at San Francisco University High School, agreed that concise writing was laudable but said the implication of a strict limit was misleading. “I worry about that kid who’s written 530 and thinks he has to cut 30 words,” he said. “It just puts another stage of anxiety in front of these kids.”
Jeffrey Brenzel, dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, said he did not stop reading if an essay ran long, but “if they go over the limit, the stakes go up.”
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