Question on essay word limit

Some schools have explicit limit on the number of words of an essay.  E.g., "... (400-word limit)”

How seriously should one take these word limits?  Say, is 493 too much?  Is 433 O.K.?  Or does it absolutely has to be within the limit?

One has to be really good in English to well develop an essay within the word limit -- I thought my expression is usually succinct, but obviously it's not succinct enough.  After drafting one essay, I had to cut, cut, and cut to reduce the number of words.  I can't imagine how it will be like for those folks who can easily write 500 words per piece in AWA :-)

Any suggestions on how to deal with the word limit?  Thanks in advance!

我听说的一个版本是， 只要字数在限制的 + -10%以内就可以。因为没有人真的会去数， 但是超过这个范围肉眼很明显得可以看出来。

你也可以在这个版考考古， 以前有类似话题的讨论。

Thanks a lot!  It helps.

Seems that I got to find "The element of style" and read it again :-)