<p>For the main personal essay on the Common App, my son’s essay was 607 words and it uploaded fine. Just preview it first. The “detail one extracurricular” essay holds to the character limit - we had to edit it after uploading as it cut off some sentences, although the word count was under 1000 characters according to Word. The individual college essays are strict also. So it does look like unless they give you a countdown, you can go over. Just preview, preview, preview.</p>