How long is your personal statement?

[JulianCrane]

How long should the personal statement be? I know ERAS gives us 28,000 characters, but that seems like a LOT of stuff. I've written 2 and a quarter pages single spaced like the PDs will see.

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[heliotrope]

I have heard to get it down to one page. That's what I did.

 

[buckley]

I did mine in one page too...

 

[lord_jeebus]

About 1000 words. I could shorten it, but not without removing information that I want to include, or stylistic devices that make it more readable.

 

[Celestron2000]

One page is what a panel of residency program admissions peeps told our class, they all agreed.

 

[ocean11]

Yeah I heard one page as well... but then why does ERAS give you so many characters?!?!? I mean you could theoretically write 10 pages or so! Anyhow, here is a question... how much emphasis is placed on the personal statement?!? are board scores more important are your grades more important?!? what can you POSSIBLY write in one page?!? it seems like too little!

 

[Hard24Get]

1)Yeah I heard one page as well... but then why does ERAS give you so many characters?!?!? I mean you could theoretically write 10 pages or so! Anyhow, here is a question...
2) how much emphasis is placed on the personal statement?!? are board scores more important are your grades more important?!?
3) what can you POSSIBLY write in one page?!? it seems like too little!

1) Because they want to give you enough rope to hang yourself

2) Very little emphasis. More like a screening OUT tool. Board scores and grades are more important

3) Don't you remember one page was all we had when we applied to med school? It's fine.

Mine is 432 words long, I was shooting for 400 (disclaimer: going into EM). Why waste space talking about stuff on the CAF? Just tell them who you are and why you belong in X specialty and be done with it.

 

[Faebinder]

Seriously... imagine yourself the PD for a minute.

You come in the morning after you have selected 10 people to review their apps. Cup of Joe is over there still untouched. People are rounding (You still didn't see your patients, damn it will the day ever end, they are already paging you to clinic.)

10 applications... 10 personal statements. Which will you want to read first? The guy with 3 pages or the guy with 1 page... hmm... how about neither? I rest my case, just write a page and make it interesting.

 

[Lion-O]

I had about 500 words initially. The doc who does our dean's letter read it, cut out a whole paragraph, and said that, still, nobody's going to read it to the end.

 

[docrv]

1 page

 

[efex101]

1 page

 

[SippiGirl08]

mine is one page, and the residency director at my school in the field i'm going into said it would be better if it were only 3/4's of a page...

 

[Tiki]

Mine was about 3/4 of a page. I was worried it wasn't long enough, but everyone has told me that it's fine.

 

[HiddenTruth]

1.25 pgs, 875 words. Too long?

 

[JulianCrane]

I got mine down to 1.5 pages. It contains what I want to say in the best way possible and I think that's the point of a personal statement.

 

[mdphd2b]

I got mine down to 1.5 pages. It contains what I want to say in the best way possible and I think that's the point of a personal statement.

I also "cut down" my PS to 1.5 pages, mainly b/c I took a lot of time off (I'm 35) and had to explain the relevance of my non-clinical experiences outside of ERAS.