Don’t go over the character count on your college essays. They’ll be truncated (photo credit: Gavin Huang).
Attention Seniors: Before clicking submit on your applications, make sure that you don’t go over the character or word count when you insert an essay or a short answer into a box on the Common Application, Supplement, or on any other online application for that matter. If you do, your essay or answer will be truncated. You might even notice truncating when your answers are at or below the character limit. It’s stated on the Common Application: “Not all answers that ‘fit’ on the online application will ‘fit’ on the PDF of the Common Application” so if you don’t see your essays, short answers, or the information that you filled in on the Activity Section in its entirety, neither will the admissions counselor who will be reading your application.
The only way that you’re going to know if the college gets your entire essays or short answers is to open the Print Preview and read what you’ve written. If you see that some of your text is missing, then shorten your response to fit within the space and then check Print Preview again. This, of course, doesn’t apply to essays that you’ve uploaded.