At my school for AP English Literature, one of many summer assignments is to respond to the three personal statement prompts from UC’s 2004-2005 application. The instructions said that the three responses will amount to about 1000 words, with at least 600 words for one of the three prompts, and two prompt responses with approximately 200 words in length each. My question is, “For the 200 word length prompt responses, does it have to be very close to 200, or could it be a little bit more?” For one of the prompt responses, I have 260 words. I’m not talking about qualifications of the teacher grading this summer assignment, but I’m talking about if I were to submit to UCs as part of the application. Thank you in advance.
<p>no, 260 is way too much for a supposedly 200 word essay.</p>
<p>bumop…</p>
<p>Yes, the UC application will let you go over the 200 word limit somewhat, but I don’t know if or when it will actually cut you off. I think I recall last year it provided a word count as feedback. I advise not going too much past the limit however. You are trying to say too much IMO if you are at 260. Try to cut back to the essentials and keep it under 210 words for both your summer assignment and the application.</p>
<p>UC’s are not forgiving when it comes to going over word limits… consider how many applications they’ve got to read and how many other students follow these guidelines, you are not special so you should follow suit. For the word count, you should not deviate too much from 200, plus five is max. Now take the other essays and add those five extra words and you’ll end up at approximately 1015 words, already 15 over the set maximum. This is all you should need, and you SHOULD NOT go over…</p>
<p>TTG</p>
<p>Will 200 words be enough to write a life difficulty experience ?</p>
<p>If you are a weaker applicant applying into a UC that is a reach for you, then you should play up your life difficulties by making it 600 words… if you are a strong applicant applying to a weaker UC, then you should write it in 200 words to be on the safe side (if this type of essay isn’t well-executed, then it could hurt you more than it can help you)…</p>
<p>TTG</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies, guys.</p>
<p>"If you are a weaker applicant applying into a UC that is a reach for you, then you should play up your life difficulties by making it 600 words… "</p>
<p>Will they cut me off if I’m writing a life difficulty experience in 600 words to a reach school? Match school? Backup UC?</p>
<p>They all cut off the same amount. You should make your essay within 5 words or so of 600.</p>
<p>Is it ok to make one of your 200 words a little shorter and the other a little longer? In my case, it is 188 vs. 228. I’m over 2 words on the 600 essay too, for a total of 1018. Is this too much?</p>
<p>It’s fine. They are not going to stop reading after 1000 words.</p>
<p>thanks beastmaster, I’m glad you think so because I just submitted! Yay!</p>