Applying to Stanford in common app

Applying to College Common and Coalition Application
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<p>And I have a couple of questions:

  1. For the short essay questions, it says the limit is 1800 characters. Does this limit include spaces or not?
  2. How long is the main common app essay supposed to be? I have seen so many different answers here that I have become pretty unsure about it. I have thought it to be around 500-600 words.</p>
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<li><p>When a limit is measured in characters, yes, it includes spaces.</p></li>
<li><p>500-600 words would be good; there isn’t an exact limit on this. Some folks have written shorter essays and some have written longer ones. See the thread in this forum asking students how long their Common App essays were. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/common-application/571389-how-long-most-people-s-commonapp-essays.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/common-application/571389-how-long-most-people-s-commonapp-essays.html&lt;/a&gt; I definitely wouldn’t recommend going over 1,000 words, but some folks have had success with longer essays…</p></li>
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