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CEO
Joined: 17 May 2007
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Word count question [#permalink]
 22 Aug 2007, 08:40
Hi All,
A PhD candidate friend of mine was talking about word counts for her thesis. She mentioned that for her academic thesis, her University did not count simple words such as 'A' , 'I', 'of' etc.
Does this apply to our application essays as well ? Currently I am 60 words over the 750 word limit for one of my essays. But I am comfortably under the word limit if this simple word criteria were applied.
Any thoughts ?
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GMAT Club Legend
Joined: 10 Apr 2007
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Location: Back in Chicago, IL
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You are within 10% don't stress it.
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Current Student
Joined: 22 Apr 2007
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I am just relying on the word-count feature of OpenOffice .. and I am pretty sure that OpenOffice counts "a", "I", "of" etc as words. It even counts "some-thing" as two words.
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Director
Joined: 13 Mar 2007
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I guess different schools view the word limit with varied strictness.
For instance, when I raised this question to one of the Harvard Adcoms, she told me that her resistance level diminished beyond 5 words. yes - 5 words is considered off limit !
I did check the sample essays for Harvard in Montauk's and Bodine's books - if I remember right, both had exmaples of essays that comfortably exceeded the word limit but the students who had authored those did not make it to Harvard. (atleast they did not have the word [admitted] against their names)
But again the popular theory is that you are good to go if you do not peep beyond 10% of the stated word limit -> hope this is not some urban legend as all of my essays thus far hover around this limit !!
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GMAT Club Legend
Status: Um... what do you want to know?
Joined: 04 Jun 2007
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most of my essays are about 10% over right now... but then again, if they are in pdf format and hard copies, I highly doubt the adcom will count the words unless you are "visibly" over the word limit!
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Director
Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 980
Location: Singapore
Concentration: Finance, Economics
Schools: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) - Class of 2014
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For chicago, I am going below the word limit.
For columbia I am using the 10% edviation rule - columbia's 750 word limit for its goals essay is a joke. There is no way I can fit everything.. so 75 words more makes some help.
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GMAT Club Legend
Status: Um... what do you want to know?
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*750* words for goals essay??? I thought Berkeley's THREE part goals essay was tough for 1000 words... I'm at 1500 right now, with a good idea of how to shrink it (remove any mention of my career progression and ONLY talk about what I learned from each job that pointed towards an MBA...) still tough though.
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Current Student
Joined: 22 Apr 2007
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Yeah, Columbia's adcoms are a little lazy in reading words. For the "What are you most passionate about" essay, we got 250 words ( Compare that to the Stanford's "What matters to you most"). Just writing "The thing that I am most passionate about" takes up like 249 words already 
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GMAT Club Legend
Status: Um... what do you want to know?
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OH you gotta be kidding me... *250* words for passion essay???
I was writing my accomplishment one and barely had a chance to talk about what the accomplishment is! (in 250 words)
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CEO
Joined: 17 May 2007
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Yes it is indeed the Columbia essays that I talk about. 750 words for goals essays. I have the additional honour of writing not only my goals and reasons for joining Columbia MBA, but also try and convince the ad-com that J-Term fits my needs. I get zero additional words for that ....
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Senior Manager
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I'm working on the part time app right now for Stern, and the goals essay is 250 words. My essay literally looks like a punch list of facts and aspirations. The adcom also said to include classes we would like to take! The title of "Financial Accounting and Reporting" is 2% of the entire essay!
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CEO
Joined: 17 May 2007
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That is RIDICULOUS. Unless they have split it into 2-3 essays (e.g. 1 for goals , one for why NYU , 1 for why MBA) ..
baer wrote: I'm working on the part time app right now for Stern, and the goals essay is 250 words. My essay literally looks like a punch list of facts and aspirations. The adcom also said to include classes we would like to take! The title of "Financial Accounting and Reporting" is 2% of the entire essay!
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GMAT Club Legend
Status: Um... what do you want to know?
Joined: 04 Jun 2007
Posts: 5463
Location: SF, CA, USA
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Followers: 49
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can you say "I want to take the FAR class?" 
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