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29 Oct 2006, 19:59
Word and page limits are something that I have been very familiar with during my academic & professional careers (English major, law student, lawyer) and I totally agree with Hjort that the best written documents are those that have been subjected to brutal editing.
That said I think you should put everything into an essay that you believe will help your application. Personally, I will be very cautious in exceeding the limit, and in fact (based on my personal academic experience) I am sure that I will be able to come in under in all cases. I think you should be very careful when exceeding the word limit, especially by a significant amount, because it will create an additional hurdle for your essay.
If I'm the reader for an application essay (I have plenty of experience with peer assessment as an English major), I would be asking "why did this person write 5 pages when we asked for 3". Your essay better be really interesting and chock full of relevant information, or you are just going to piss off the reader. Perhaps the more challenging question I would be asking is "How come this person cannot get his message across in 3 pages when everyone else can?" In my mind, as a reader, I would be comparing the long essay to the best of the best that came in at the appropriate length. It's just a natural thing to do. As an applicant, I just don't really need that type scrutiny, especially since I'm quite sure that many applicants will have devastatingly good, tightly written essays answering the exact same questions.
If you go substantially over the word/page limit, I think you are just making problems for yourself. The only reason to risk that is if you are certain that the additional words/pages will help your cause, AND if you are certain that there is no way to accomplish this in a shorter length.