Does it look bad to write a longer essay than what they asked?

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Hi, it's late at night and I'm stressing over this!

I'm submitting my application for the LVN program tomorrow and we had to write a personal statement. It said 250 words but I struggled to keep it at 250 and I made it as short as I could with 375 words. Do you guys think this will look bad that I made it longer, I mean its still less than a page long but it's not 250 words.

Aaaah! I'm so stressed out and worried! :arghh::nailbiting:

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I do the same thing. The instructor wants 2 pages I give her 5.

That being said. This is an essay for getting into school. They might be looking to see if you follow directions. Or maybe in the past they had some long winded essays.

Is it possible to edit a little more on your essay? Or maybe just tell them it's over the limit.

I wished I had better advice. You certainly have my empathy.

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Specializes in Neuro, Telemetry.

In my experience, keep it within the limit. That limit is because they don't want overly wordy, long winded essays. They want to see that you can follow directions and can condense your writing to only include the pertinent info. Going over the limit, could potentially lose you some points. Especially because you missed the mark by 125 and not just a few words. That's a huge difference.

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Yes -- part of what they are assessing is your ability to follow directions, as well as your ability to communicate effectively (concisely). I would advise you strongly to work at getting your essay down to the 250-word limit they gave you. If it were just a few words over (253, 255 ...), that would be one thing -- submitting 150% of the number of words they requested is 'way too much. You would be hurting yourself more than helping yourself.

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