Who else officially hates the 750 character limit for the short answer?

Applying to College Common and Coalition Application
1

<p>I’m having no trouble getting within the 150 word limit for the activity short answer… Now 750 characters, that’s another story. Apparently they expect that each word should be approximately 5 characters - but then you have to consider spaces for each word as well as punctuation.</p>

<p>“In ordinary English text, there are on the average about 4.5 letters per word”
-An introduction to information theory: symbols, signals & noise by John Robinson Pierce</p>

<p>So add a space for each word, and that’s 5.5 characters per word… now add punctuation, and no doubt it’s something very close to 6. 150x6 =900 now THAT should have been the character limit…!</p>

<p><em>deep breath</em> <em>rant over</em> :D</p>

2

<p>Me! I currently have a 172 word, 766 character essay.</p>

3

<p>Haha, I somehow have a 145 word, 827 character essay ><</p>

4

<p>Maybe you use longer words :P</p>

<p>But yea, I understand what you mean. I had 167 words and 913 characters, so I had to butcher it down to 134 words and 750 characters…</p>

5

<p>The point is to prevent people from “thesaurizing” their short answers. Most people don’t use SAT vocab in everyday conversation. I think, if you are writing passionately, yet objectively, you can say what you need to say with smaller words.</p>

6

<p>I finished that in like, ten minutes </p>

<p>/showoff :P</p>

7

<p>so annoying</p>

8

<p>Mine’s at 174/900, but that’s just a first draft. I’ll cut out the wordiness and clean it up a little and it’ll be fine.</p>