<p>the essay is part of the application. it should be the very last thing on the application. last year there were 3 windows to fill in the essays. they have 3 relatively general topics and you choose which one will be your long one. i’m not quite sure but i think it’s 1000 words total for all three so you do 500 words for one and 2 that are 250 words each. each one doesn’t have to be exactly 250 or 500, but the computer cuts you off at a total of 1000 (or whatever the actual number is) words. this means you could have two that are 260ish words each, and then one that is 480ish, just as long as the TOTAL isn’t over 1000 you’re good.</p>