I think it is 2500 and spaces do not count. This is different from the SLS application (which counted spaces) and this totally confounded my son. Let me tell you what happened to my son in an effort to save you the time and aggravation. He wrote his three essays in Word, meticulously counted the characters and spaces (like he had to for the SLS application)-he did this by using the character counting tool, and agonized about cutting down letters. On one essay he spent an hour trying to cut down 46 letters after spending days writing it. After 1 1/2 weeks of it he finally got his essays to where he wanted them while still being under the 2,500. When he cut and pasted each one into the essay block they were each between 200-300 characters BELOW the limit. (once you paste your essay it tells you your character count on the portal-and you still are able to change the essay after the letter count but before you save it)Total waste of time and energy cutting out those letters. So my advice, based on my son's aggravation is before you start stressing about how much to cut down, paste it and get a word count in the actual portal.
