How long should it be?

[Femtochemistry]

hi,

My personal essay is 3 pages long...for the AMCAS they say one page long with 5300 characters...mine is 3 pages long with 4500? how could this be right? I am using MS word..how long was your personal essay?

thx!

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[Hero]

are you using like font 18 and double space? Once you copy and paste in the PS into AMCAS, it won't look too long. I think my PS was short by a bit: 4,493 characters with space.

 

[FrostWeasel]

Mona,

I think in this instance, once you have an essay that reads well and portrays you as an interesting person, the number of characters really should not be of much concern. Personally, I would much rather read two pages of "rock'em sock'em" (as it were), than two sentences of say St. Augustine's Confessions...but I digress. The point is, in most cases quality counts far more than quantity.

Frost

 

[analu]

My PS came out to about 3 pages, double spaced. I'm pretty sure AMCAS counts spaces as characters.

If you copy and paste into the electronic app from MS Word, make sure to go back after you saved your work...your PS might have gotten cut off. I cut and pasted mine last year, and as I was doing a final audit prior to submission, I noticed that I was missing the last sentence of my PS! Whew! Sometimes it pays to be anal... :wink:

 

[Doctora Foxy]

Someone posted that if you use Microsoft Word, your PS will appear like one big paragraph. You should use WORDPAD! Please be careful!

 

[rajneel1]

it doesn't matter what you use. amcas hasn't figured out the whole paragraph thing. it will look like one big paragraph.

 

[pocwana]

should we use html code in the text field to avoid the one big paragraph thing?
if so, the best thing would be

<p>

it's the html paragraph tag. breaks the line and puts a space in between blocks of text.

 

[pocwana]

And is it just me, or do i see a "SEARCH" link up at the top.
woo-hoo!

 

[analu]

I used MS Word and the cut-and-paste method on last year's electronic app, and it worked okay. My PS came out single-spaced, with one space between paragraphs.

 

[Doctora Foxy]

Maybe you should put in a space between paragraphs on the Word document then? Because mine was one huge embarassing paragraph.

 

[mongoose]

It should be 5 to 7 inches long on average.