essays and word limits

iostream
Tue, 04 Jul 2006 18:11:28 +0000

how strict are word limits on applications?

for example, on the common app, the short answer is supposed to be fewer than 150 words and the essay is supposed to be fewer than 500 words.

my responses so far are 250 and 700 words, respectively, and that’s even after I pruned them significantly.

is this a big problem?