<p>sooo, how about 598??? is this too risky? would it just **** off the reader?</p>
<p>If you’re actually saying something important with those extra 98 words, then I say go for it. Don’t ramble and see if you can redact parts of your essay that don’t contribute to the main idea.</p>
<p>As much as I would like to tell you to cut it to 500 words, I do recall several people posting on here saying that they got in despite having essays over the word limit. They probably don’t do a word count on each essay, so if it isn’t that obvious visually, then you could get away with it, but do make sure those extra words actually mean something.</p>