how long is your personal st.

[fido]

So June 1 st. around the corner and while every body getting ready to submit the new application i want to ask some questions

First, what is the length of your personal statement .I know the max. is 5000 words, but are you planning to write that long? I heard some saying they read the first page and others saying not even that. What do you think?

Second, are you going to make changes to your personal statement in case you will apply to DO.? Or it is not an issue to mention to the type of medicine you want to study (Allo VS Oste.)

Good luck everybody

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[JohnMadden]

So June 1 st. around the corner and while every body getting ready to submit the new application i want to ask some questions

First, what is the length of your personal statement .I know the max. is 5000 words, but are you planning to write that long? I heard some saying they read the first page and others saying not even that. What do you think?

Second, are you going to make changes to your personal statement in case you will apply to DO.? Or it is not an issue to mention to the type of medicine you want to study (Allo VS Oste.)

Good luck everybody

FYI - Maximum length of AMCAS personal statement is 5300 CHARACTERS. Unless they changed something...

 

[fido]

Thanks for updating, but that is making it worst, i want to save some energy for secondaries ,if i got any

 

[etf]

Thanks for updating, but that is making it worst, is there any body want to write 12-15 pages for the personal st.
i want to save some energy for secondaries ,if i got any

huh?

 

[Depakote]

FYI - Maximum length of AMCAS personal statement is 5300 CHARACTERS. Unless they changed something...

5300 characters including spaces for Allopathic.

I believe it's 4500 including spaces for Osteopathic.

So that's a few changes required right there... As for content changes, I didn't make many, I didn't try pander specifically to the DO schools in my AACOMAS PS and I did just fine.

Just write about why you want to go into medicine and you should be fine.

 

[munnabhai]

i really dont understand what he is trying to say

 

[mongrel]

Thanks for updating, but that is making it worst, i want to save some energy for secondaries ,if i got any

5300 characters would normally be much shorter than 5000 words...

 

[Lorienne7]

Thanks for updating, but that is making it worst, i want to save some energy for secondaries ,if i got any

Hmmm, I think we need to illustrate the difference between characters and words for you. Take the following sentence:

Are you kidding me?

The above sentence was 19 characters but only four words. See how those characters can add up?

Ultimately, 5300 characters ends up being a little less than a page and a half (single-spaced) while 5000 words would be ~7 pages single-spaced. You only need 5300 CHARACTERS for your personal statement.

 

[AtreyuRocks]

Hmmm, I think we need to illustrate the difference between characters and words for you. Take the following sentence:

Are you kidding me?

The above sentence was 19 characters but only four words. Ultimately, 5300 characters ends up being a little less than a page and a half.

19 characters, including spaces.

(just to make it painfully clear )

 

[fido]

ok every body calm down

Was my mistake, 5300 characters still a bit long (for me )

Any one agree?

 

[fido]

19 characters, including spaces.

(just to make it painfully clear )

i didn't know that 5300 goes to page and half

 

[mongrel]

i didn't know that 5300 goes to page and half

Single spaced on normal Microsoft Word margins goes slightly over a page and a half. And certainly you don't have to use up your entire character allowance. Just tell your story and make it sincere and you'll be fine

 

[HumbleMD]

OP: You should NOT skimp on your personal statement and try to "save energy" for your secondaries. Worry about those as they start rolling in. Instead, you should really be starting to work on your personal statement now. Give it some sincere thought, sketch it out roughly, and don't be worried to throw one out and start completely over. You have struggled through courses to maintain a good GPA, studied hard for a decent MCAT, and been involved in a number of time-consuming ECs. Don't let the Personal Statment be the weakest point of your application, as it's one you have a large amount of control over. And don't let it seem daunting. Once you start typing, you'll realize that 5300 characters is MUCH shorter than first thought, and will probably end up struggling over what to cut.

 

[AtreyuRocks]

Single spaced on normal Microsoft Word margins goes slightly over a page and a half. And certainly you don't have to use up your entire character allowance. Just tell your story and make it sincere and you'll be fine

I imagine this is what most people are basing 5300~>1.5 pages (I did). I agree, tell your story. IMO, a single page looks nice, and is easy on the eyes. However, if there are elements to your story that are necessary, then by all means it needs to be included regardless of length.

Personally, I cannot stand it when people do not put two spaces after a period (in formal writing, thread posts not included). Of course you can always omit that second space if you need more room (I wouldn't advise it though cause you could get some anal person like me and end up annoying them). I had to locate an old copy of my PS cause but more or less I ended up with:

817 words
3,938 characters
4,786 characters with spaces
4 paragraphs
53 lines

...according to Microsoft Word. And as I recall, the character count (w/spaces) matched with AMCAS give or take a few characters. (No hard returns nor tab for the first paragraph allowed...)

 

[AtreyuRocks]

OP: You should NOT skimp on your personal statement and try to "save energy" for your secondaries. Worry about those as they start rolling in. Instead, you should really be starting to work on your personal statement now. Give it some sincere thought, sketch it out roughly, and don't be worried to throw one out and start completely over. You have struggled through courses to maintain a good GPA, studied hard for a decent MCAT, and been involved in a number of time-consuming ECs. Don't let the Personal Statment be the weakest point of your application, as it's one you have a large amount of control over. And don't let it seem daunting. Once you start typing, you'll realize that 5300 characters is MUCH shorter than first thought, and will probably end up struggling over what to cut.

Yes, start long. Do not constrict your original PS draft to be 5300 char. You want to get all of your ideas out there while they are flowing and so you don't leave anything out. In my experience, I wrote, re-wrote, re-vised, again, and again...

 

[Disinence2]

A word of advice! Once you put all your info in there is the "print application" button. Make sure your personal statment looks pretty in the printed version because thats what your interviewers are going to have. I made the mistake of assuming that the "print application" on my computer was just screwed up and the colleges would see the version without massive formatting errors. I was wrong

 

[AnEyeLikeMars]

OP: You should NOT skimp on your personal statement and try to "save energy" for your secondaries. Worry about those as they start rolling in. Instead, you should really be starting to work on your personal statement now. Give it some sincere thought, sketch it out roughly, and don't be worried to throw one out and start completely over. You have struggled through courses to maintain a good GPA, studied hard for a decent MCAT, and been involved in a number of time-consuming ECs. Don't let the Personal Statment be the weakest point of your application, as it's one you have a large amount of control over. And don't let it seem daunting. Once you start typing, you'll realize that 5300 characters is MUCH shorter than first thought, and will probably end up struggling over what to cut.

I agree. The personal statement is important (and not very long at all, that's kind of why it's hard). You should fill the space (obviously with good stuff, not fluff)

At several of my interviews, my interviewers were only given my primary app minus the numbers (semi-closed). So, all of them used my PS as the basis for questions. In terms of adcomm deliberations, I don't know how important the PS is, but I guarantee that it is read.

 

[CTtarheel]

use the space, but only if you have something to say. Mine was only 4700 characters and nobody seemed to complain. If you're under 4000 characters I would look to see if there isn't somewhere where you'd benefit from a specific example or short anecdote (you know, all that showing, not telling nonsense).

 

[gujuDoc]

FYI - Maximum length of AMCAS personal statement is 5300 CHARACTERS. Unless they changed something...

CORRECT!!! They have NOT CHANGED ANYTHING!!

P.S. CAPS = emphasis not yelling. Don't take it the wrong way.

Ok that said, yeah there are 5300 characters. I'm not sure how many words that translates out to. Maybe roughly around nearly 1000 words at the most.

If it were 5000 words, depending on the length of the words, it would be nearly 25,000 characters. That's 5 times as much is allowed for the PS

 

[gujuDoc]

Nevermind. It seems people already beat me to the punch line about the characters vs. words.



That said, for advice on the PS, please see the sticky up top. We have given several tips there. I even posted the outline of the powerpoint that USF College of Medicine's Office of Academic Enrichment gave on the topic of writing Personal statements and the Do's/Don'ts there.

I will also say that you don't need to use every single one of the characters, but many people do.

Don't write your personal statement half assedly because some schools will not have secondary essays and will use that as their essay of importance. I.E. NJ allo schools, HMS NP, etc.

Secondly, even if they have essays on the secondary, their essays generally deal with different questions then the one asked by the AMCAS. AMCAS asks you to tell "why medicine" whereas some other secondaries like USF asks more of a "tell me about your family life and background" kind of question and yet others like Duke with its 6 essays asks questions about things like "ethical dilemmas you've faced" and what not.

Take each step and treat it with the same weight.

 

[CardiacIntensivist]

OP: You should NOT skimp on your personal statement and try to "save energy" for your secondaries. Worry about those as they start rolling in. Instead, you should really be starting to work on your personal statement now. Give it some sincere thought, sketch it out roughly, and don't be worried to throw one out and start completely over. You have struggled through courses to maintain a good GPA, studied hard for a decent MCAT, and been involved in a number of time-consuming ECs. Don't let the Personal Statment be the weakest point of your application, as it's one you have a large amount of control over. And don't let it seem daunting. Once you start typing, you'll realize that 5300 characters is MUCH shorter than first thought, and will probably end up struggling over what to cut.

Only too true, unfortunately.

 

[gujuDoc]

Only too true, unfortunately.

hahaha! Yeah I was thinking the same thing too. I know I had to write a personal statement for an IMS app recently and I was struggling to decide what to cut out once I got the rough draft done. That's the same problem I see with a lot of the Personal Statements that I help edit for other people.


I will stress one thing here:

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON'T TRY TO STUFF YOUR WHOLE RESUME in the span of 5300 characters.

P.S. Caps does not equal yelling in this instance. That is in caps for emphasis because I'm too lazy to the whole bolding thing.

 

[blargh]

5,300 is too short =(

i spent so much time combing through my ps trying to weed out unnecessary words.

 

[Richard Kimble]

ok every body calm down

Was my mistake, 5300 characters still a bit long (for me )

Any one agree?

This is your oppurtunity to talk to every ADCOM you apply to. I wouldn't be short on words. If anything, you should be worried about having to cut stuff out. It will be read and re-read at every stage of review on your application. The PS is you! No spelling/grammar mistakes either, unless you want to come across not caring about these kind of details like not caring about oh say... what blood type your patient is, etc. It takes time, be prepared!

 

[heemang]

i won the award for shortest personal statement at my emory interview and the interviewer said, "thank you!"

it was a little more than half a page and straight to the point.

 

[gsmithers68]

So June 1 st. around the corner and while every body getting ready to submit the new application i want to ask some questions

First, what is the length of your personal statement .I know the max. is 5000 words, but are you planning to write that long? I heard some saying they read the first page and others saying not even that. What do you think?

Second, are you going to make changes to your personal statement in case you will apply to DO.? Or it is not an issue to mention to the type of medicine you want to study (Allo VS Oste.)

Good luck everybody

As other posters have mentioned... your ps is the single most important essay you will write for many schools you apply to. They use it as the backbone of your application when reviewing your ECs and everything else. I think it is by far worth spending a month on getting it absolutely perfect down to the T. Secondaries are important too, but less than two weeks was about all I spent on each. Just use the ps support guide on here to help you, make an outline, and then for the month of May sit down and write like your Charles Dickens