A fun little experiment with essay length

Colleges & Universities Harvard University
1

<p>I see a lot of threads about people worrying about the length of their essay.</p>

<p>How can we figure out how much essay length matters?</p>

<p>For my stats class I thought it might be interesting to take a survey to find out if there’s any correlation between essay length and acceptance into Harvard. There’s probably not, and there will probably be too many lurking variables, but maybe this can give people insight into to effect of the actual length of an essay.</p>

<p>Anyone who feels like participating, please indicate which range your essay length falls into, and whether you were accepted, rejected, or waitlisted. We can keep a running tally, so at the end it might look like this</p>

<p><400, 0 accepted, 3 rejected
400-500, 8 accepted, 15 rejected
500-600, 12 accepted, 30 rejected
600-700, 13 accepted, 50 rejected
700-800, 10 accepted, 45 rejected</p>

<br>

<br>

<p>Of course those are just arbitrary numbers.</p>

<p>And don’t worry, I’m not trying to beat the system and figure out which essay length yields the highest acceptance rate, if any. My app is already in anyway.</p>

2

<p>Your sampling pool might be a little skewed. It is CC, after all.</p>

3

<p>My son was accepted two years ago. His essay was a little short of 500 words.</p>

4

<p>Don’t forget about confounding/lurking variables: if the essay was fantabulous, it didn’t really matter about the length.</p>

5

<p>if it’s too long the reader might chuck it. I think a great essay with 500-700 words is accepted. A good essay with 1500 words is rejected. But then there’s the actual application…</p>