I once asked a professor how long she wanted a homework essay to be after I noticed the guidelines d

I once asked a professor how long she wanted a homework essay to be after I noticed the guidelines didn’t specify.

Her response: “As long as it needs to be.”

That didn’t feel very helpful at the time.

But in hindsight, I get what she meant. The point of an essay isn’t to simply meet word count. In fact, as I’ll clarify later, it’s one of the last things you should worry about.

That said, for most of your college essays, word count is something you’ll have to take into account (eventually).

And it’s understandable that how long your college essays(s) should be could feel confusing at times, since different applications and supplemental essays take pretty different approaches, and sometimes word count is a hard rule, whereas at other times it’s more of a guideline.