<p>As much as college admissions officers seem to care about applicants whose essays overshoot their suggested word limits, do you think they care greatly about applicants who undershoot them by comparable margins? Surely undershooting is preferred to overshooting, no?</p>
<p>How large is the undershoot, usually there’s an acceptable range (e.g. 250-500) and the more you stray from this range (whether above or under), the more spectacular your essay must be to explain why you ignored the given range.</p>
<p>The essay is just shy of 300 words, and the prompt explicitly requests a maximum of 500 words, but does not specify any minimum number.</p>
<p>The quality of the essay is much more important than the length.</p>