First time REU applicant

Hey guys physics and data science undergrad here, it’s my first time ever applying to something like that and I just found out about it on Friday… which sucks because I would applied to like 10-15 had I known earlier so I’m trying to get a good foot into the one i’m applying to. I’ve spent the entire day today writing my answers for the additional questions and each one (noting long answer) has a 5000 character limit. I’m not quite reaching 5000 (2-3000’s), should I be worried? it’s due in about 3 weeks so maybe i can slowly keep adding on for a good quality final product

also this reu (UCR data science pipeline) doesn’t ask for references or personal statements, should I be adding that to my application materials anyway?