How many characters do your activity descriptions take up?

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uclaussr

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Mine around 750 each..is that too little? I made the mistake of doing the DO application first, which limits to 750 each, but AMCAS allows 1325..should i go back and redo them to add more? Or is 750 enough?
 
I'm no expert, but I'd say that's more than enough as long as you cover what you basically did. I'm sure a lot of people will use fewer characters than you. My longest one is about 800 and most are around 200-300.
 
I'm interested in this response too. LizzyM really stressed keeping things brief, just give a good description of what you did, and don't elaborate on how it affected you. she also suggested to leave out pronouns and write like a resume. But yeah, I'm wondering how brief is brief. Some of my descriptions are around 300, cause there's only so much you can say about volunteering before you start to list useless information if you don't talk about what it meant to you. My average is around 700-900, and my most extensive one was almost the limit.
 
I'm interested in this response too. LizzyM really stressed keeping things brief, just give a good description of what you did, and don't elaborate on how it affected you. she also suggested to leave out pronouns and write like a resume. But yeah, I'm wondering how brief is brief. Some of my descriptions are around 300, cause there's only so much you can say about volunteering before you start to list useless information if you don't talk about what it meant to you. My average is around 700-900, and my most extensive one was almost the limit.

Although some of my descriptions are well below the limit (I'm not finished writing them all up), I have a few descriptions where I'm having a really tough time keeping it under 1325. It's difficult to sum these up since these experiences involve so many things. Is it much more important to keep them brief (so that they're read)? Especially my research entries are tough to keep under 1325...
 
I kept my descriptions to two to three sentences each. Multiple interviewers commented on how they like that I kept things to the point. Remember, they have to read dozens of applications if not more. If I had to do it all again, I'd definitely be keeping the descriptions under 200 characters each.
 
Just to throw another viewpoint out there, so you know things aren't exactly cut and dried: I hate really short descriptions. It makes you folks sound like automatons. At least give an indication of what you learned or what it meant to you. Otherwise applications start to blur together.

Imagine how many of the exact same sounding applications we read. Sure, don't ramble, but do a little more than:

Hospital Vounteering:

* 200 hours over 18 months
* Assist patients, staff and physicians
 
About 5 of them are brief, at ~200-250 chars. Another 5 needed more description, about 500 chars. For 3 of them, I went up to the max. These three experiences were my current career (decade-long), a 550 hour clinical volunteering/research gig where I've held 3 different roles, and a "miscellaneous employment" bucket entry describing 5-6 jobs lumped together.
 
Most of mine are around the 300 length simply because I'm sure the committee doesn't want to read a bunch of fluff. I have two or three that extend to about 700, but this is only if it was like a camp I did where I would explain what the camp was all about and the goals of the activity I was apart of.
 
Mine around 750 each..is that too little? I made the mistake of doing the DO application first, which limits to 750 each, but AMCAS allows 1325..should i go back and redo them to add more? Or is 750 enough?

TMDSAS limits you to 300, FWIW. So 750 is probably more than plenty.
 
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