Question about Swarthmore Supplement

interesteddad
Sat, 27 Dec 2008 10:00:40 +0000

A good length for the Why Swat essay is long enough to say what you want to say and short enough so that the admissions officer doesn’t lose interest and stop reading it.

There are so many different approaches to the Why Swat essay that it would be impossible to say what is “normal”. However, I would think that most aim for somewhere in the 250 to 500 word range.

You really do want to keep in mind that the readers are plowing through thousands of these, often late at night, fueled only by coffee and they will not respond well to an overly long wordy essay that could have been edited to half the length and been twices as effective.