"Please Submit a Writing Sample of 4-6 pp (1,000-1,500 words)" Mine is 6 pages, 2,100 words...

[11Q13]

How should I interpret the requirement? It is 6 pages...with completely normal margins, fonts, spacing etc, it's just copiously over the parenthetical word limit for some reason. Does the fact that it's in parenthesis mean I don't really need to worry about it?

I condensed the same essay to 5 pages for a different university, they require 5 page max with no word limit, and that has a word count of 1,800 words which is still well over 1500!

Thoughts?

[Ziz]

They're clearly using the 250 words per page estimate that all professors seem to use, yet every student knows essays work out to about 300 words per page. I would go with the page limit. Look at it this way, they will see your sample is between 4 and 6 pages. THey aren't going to do a word count if it is in the acceptable range. If it were 7 pages, they might do a word count to see if it is still acceptable...

[anonthropology]

I think you should be safe since you're inside the page range.

Do you mind saying what kind of sample you provided?

I'm applying to Anthropology PhD programs and most programs allow AT LEAST 10 pages. However, I have one that asks for six pages. I don't really know what to do with that, as all of my potential samples are from much longer works. I have one conference paper that is only about 8 pages, and I might be able to edit it down further, but I'm tempted to just pull out six pages from a longer paper, although that's probably not a great idea.

Six pages means six pages double-spaced, right? Because I've also thought about just single spacing a longer paper, but I'm imagining if they ask for six pages it's because they don't want to read more, and so that would probably work against me.

I hope this isn't a threadjack, I was just about to post on this, and then saw your posting and thought you and others here might be able to help.

Thanks!

[adaptations]

To the OP: I wouldn't worry about the word count since you are within the page range.

To the follow-up question, "yes" - your sample should be double spaced. Good luck with the short limit, I wouldn't even know where to begin submitting something between 4-6 pages.