How long is your personal statement

[combatwombat]

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I feel like the task of writing a personal statement is a bit different for us nontrads, having had more experiences and (potentially) more complicated backgrounds than your average student who marches in lock-step from undergrad to medical school. I for one am having a tough time weaving it all together, and am wondering if I should try to fit in as much as possible or keep it short and to the point.

Currently mine is 3263 characters (including spaces) and takes up 1 full page.

 

[AdemTD]

I feel like the task of writing a personal statement is a bit different for us nontrads, having had more experiences and (potentially) more complicated backgrounds than your average student who marches in lock-step from undergrad to medical school. I for one am having a tough time weaving it all together, and am wondering if I should try to fit in as much as possible or keep it short and to the point.

Currently mine is 3263 characters (including spaces) and takes up 1 full page.

I think my AACOMAS PS statement was maxed out, and my AMCAS (pretty much the same statement as AACOMAS) was 4,270 characters.

 

[urrugby]

As many characters as you can fit. You may want to start off by writing your PS without regard to the character limit, then check to see how much you need to cut and trim off any fluff or verbose sentences.

If you problem right now is cohesion, it may be helpful to write a list of all the experiences you want to discuss, and then select 1-3 that accurately illustrate your path to medicine. You'll have plenty of space in the secondaries to list all of your other activities and achievements.

 

[student1799]

I used every one of the 5300 characters available on AMCAS, and I had to do quite a bit of cutting to make it fit. On the other hand, I had a pretty unusual journey to medicine (I've been out of college for over 20 years, and had a prior career in a different field).

If you feel you've really said everything you want/need to, then don't feel obligated to pad your PS. But make sure that it really does make a strong, coherent case for why you want to be a doctor. And I would strongly urge you to show it to at least a couple of people, including at least one MD, for feedback before you submit. It's very easy to get "tunnel vision" when you've been working on something all by yourself, and having a fresh set of eyes look at your PS can be extremely valuable.

 

[quiz]

my was close to maxed out. i wrote 3 times as much as there was spaced for and then crossed out the stuff i didn't need. rewrote with the stuff that was left. crossed out more stuff. rewrote again. crossed out more stuff and so on. in the end i left out a lot, but the essay seemed more concised to me and told a story rather than a list of activities. you can use the ec section for most of it. i maxed that out to. 15 activities/interests.

perhaps you can find a theme that will help you decide what to cut or leave.

i can't imagine they have time to read it more than once. long stories may make their eyes glaze over.

good luck!!

 

[Krisss17]

I used every one of the 5300 characters available on AMCAS, and I had to do quite a bit of cutting to make it fit. On the other hand, I had a pretty unusual journey to medicine (I've been out of college for over 20 years, and had a prior career in a different field).

If you feel you've really said everything you want/need to, then don't feel obligated to pad your PS. But make sure that it really does make a strong, coherent case for why you want to be a doctor. And I would strongly urge you to show it to at least a couple of people, including at least one MD, for feedback before you submit. It's very easy to get "tunnel vision" when you've been working on something all by yourself, and having a fresh set of eyes look at your PS can be extremely valuable.

I think I used like 4400 characters with spaces. I totally agree with this statement though. I strongly suggest that you follow student1799's suggestion of having others look at it. You'll probably have to make numerous revisions, but when it is finished, I think you will be very happy with your PS.

 

[Hextra]

As some have suggested, it's probably more beneficial to write out your statement without any regard for length restrictions. That being said, if you feel you can tell your story and give your PS character and voice in a shorter, more concise way, by all means take advantage of it.

The adcoms read so many PS's in such a short amount of time, coming across one that injects color and paints a vivid picture of the author will do more for your application than simply riding the character-restriction# ever will.