Has anyone with a PS SLIGHTLY under 5,000 characters, successfully submitted?

[DreamComeTrue09]

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So my PS is 4,998 characters! It was a hard process going from 7,800 characters to 4,998....it took months of hardwork 😱 Anyway, I remember last year saving my essay at 4,987 characters but when i went to submit the whole application I got an error saying my PS was over the character limit even though it said it was 4,987 characters! Sooooo, since I wont be submitting until late tomorrow Im curious if anyone has had this problem because I am beginning to stress! 😉

 

[VAgirl]

So my PS is 4,998 characters! It was a hard process going from 7,800 characters to 4,998....it took months of hardwork 😱 Anyway, I remember last year saving my essay at 4,987 characters but when i went to submit the whole application I got an error saying my PS was over the character limit even though it said it was 4,987 characters! Sooooo, since I wont be submitting until late tomorrow Im curious if anyone has had this problem because I am beginning to stress! 😉

Last year limit was 600 words...but that's not really the point of the post, now is it. 😛

I'm guessing you wrote your PS in MS Word. MS word has a nasty habit of inserting extra characters (not visible), so I've heard. So try pasting your PS into a text document first, which should strip out that invisible formatting that can add characters, then paste it into VMCAS. It should work just fine.

 

[mstweetie]

Last year limit was 600 words...but that's not really the point of the post, now is it. 😛

I'm guessing you wrote your PS in MS Word. MS word has a nasty habit of inserting extra characters (not visible), so I've heard. So try pasting your PS into a text document first, which should strip out that invisible formatting that can add characters, then paste it into VMCAS. It should work just fine.

i had problems as well...the actual limit is reallllyyy 5000 characters. Even when the red counter at the bottom of the box said 4987, it still wouldn't let me save it because, supposedly, it was over 5000 words. It was really annoying. I just did whatever I could to delete a couple words. I also only did one space after each sentence.

 

[Rusty27]

I tried pasting mine into Wordpad from MS Word to get rid of any invisible characters but it still wouldn't let me submit at exactly 5000 characters. However, I whittled it down a little more and it went through at 4990 characters.

 

[rachroo]

Or you could always just re-type whatever you had in word into the VMCAS application. That's what I did since I had problems with word and VMCAS not agreeing on how many characters I had!

 

[HopefulAg]

I had that same problem but even when I re-typed it it still wouldn't let me submit it. So I scaled it back another 100 characters or so (which is ridiculously hard...I was taking out spaces between periods [instead of the normal 2 I used 1] exchanging words for synonyms that were like, two letters shorter, re-writing entire sentences to get the point across in less detail, etc) and it let me submit then.

 

[Pomona2006]

I ran into a problem copying and pasting my statement from Word...but after re-typing it into a text file, it worked beautifully! 🙂

 

[wildvet]

I had to cut mine down to 4991 characters in order to submit it, it was ridiculously hard and annoying! I had no idea how to fix it to make VMCAS allow me to save it with 5000 characters, though, so I made it sound as pretty as I could with the 4991 and just submitted it the way it was.

 

[JustCats]

I typed my PS right into the text box and ended up with 4997 characters. Didn't work. I had to cut 30 characters to get it to work. I am certain that those 30 characters are the only thing that stands between me and vet school. 😉

 

[FlyOnTheWall]

Most PS's should be trimmed by 100's of characters just on general principle.. They're soooooo wordy!!!

 

[DreamComeTrue09]

What a dreadful process it is removing whole sentences from your neatly packaged PS to fit the 5,000 character limit....I sympathize with all of you!

 

[Malhi]

I typed my PS right into the text box and ended up with 4997 characters. Didn't work. I had to cut 30 characters to get it to work. I am certain that those 30 characters are the only thing that stands between me and vet school. 😉

Lol! I know the feeling! 🙄

 

[rachroo]

Most PS's should be trimmed by 100's of characters just on general principle.. They're soooooo wordy!!!

😱 Your joking, right?

 

[FlyOnTheWall]

😱 Your joking, right?

Sadly no. Most could be trimmed and the language tightened up.

 

[nymfn712]

the reason word and vmcas disagree on character count is because vmcas counts every "enter" to move to a new line as 5 characters, while word does not. this is what my pre-vet advisor told me anyway

 

[KittyRex]

My PS character count was 4995 according to VMCAS, and my app was submitted with no problems.

 

[jacquesthmonkey]

It doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with Word. When entered mine the VMCAS counter said 4999...and wouldn't accept it. So i changed a word or two, and it said 4998...and wouldn't accept it....so I changed more words, and it said 4995 and wouldn't accept it....so I beat my head against the wall, railed against the character counter gods, changed more words, and it said 4989 and finally took the damned thing.
And I didn't do mine in Word anyway. Frankly, their counter is flat stupid.

 

[darren1228]

It doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with Word. When entered mine the VMCAS counter said 4999...and wouldn't accept it. So i changed a word or two, and it said 4998...and wouldn't accept it....so I changed more words, and it said 4995 and wouldn't accept it....so I beat my head against the wall, railed against the character counter gods, changed more words, and it said 4989 and finally took the damned thing.
And I didn't do mine in Word anyway. Frankly, their counter is flat stupid.

Yup I had the same problems! What's the point of a counter when it can't count