The Common App ONLY CARES ABOUT SPACES, and so does this word counter. (Google Docs counts differently! Beware of other word counters.)
Are you doing an application that counts words in a different way? Send a quick email to chromaticconflux@gmail.com and I'll add it as a setting.

In UC PIQs, the em-dash will display like a hyphen - so I'd avoid it. Plus, even though it's a wonderful punctuation mark for cutting word count (my application included "7.8/10—significantly" as one word), tragically it may make admissions officers think you're a dirty scum-of-the-earth brainrotted clanker-pilled lazybones who wrote their essays with AI. I think putting "--" between words is an okay alternative, but it's kind of low aura, so consider actually cutting needless words instead of hacking the system like the halcyon pre-LLM days.