<p>I’m glad colleges are talking about this- I think it makes sense to have a general word limit so that kids don’t write 3 page essays that adcoms don’t have time to read. But I don’t see why a specific word count has to be such a big of a deal. If you’re a few dozen words over the limit your essay is still going to be short enough for adcoms to skim through quickly, which seemed to be the goal of establishing the limit in the first place.</p>