Times New Roman was designed to fit a lot of text on a newspaper page. Its popularity is completely due to it being an accessible default in early software, not to any intrinsic superiority in presentation. I consider it to be quite ugly, although not as bad as Arial.

Of course that's a thing! Although 13% doesn't sound like a significant amount. The trick I used in high school: Write the essay. If it's too short by 20-30%, increase the verbosity in every place you can until it's long enough. If it's short by more than 30% then you have bigger problems. If your essay only needs an extra page on a 15 page assignment, chances are you can add fluff and easily hit the 15 page mark.

I think I'd have more use for the opposite: a font that's 13% narrower, to stuff more words into a page limit. It's harder to make text more concise than more verbose!

Yes, I agree. Concision is an art, verbosity is a chore.