<p>I wouldn’t worry too much about being over on the common app essay…I’m sure a lot of people will do what you guys did and send in 600-800 word essays or so, and they’ll either know or look and find out that there wasn’t an explicit word limit. They’re smart people. Mine was 600ish at first and I cut it down to about 520 just in case, but it made my essay better anyways.</p>