Length of Personal Statement

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musicmuse1122

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Hi,

I am wondering about the typical length of an AMCAS personal statement. The website gives you 5300 characters of space, but in Word that turns out to be close to 1 3/4 pages, which is wayyy longer than any college admissions essay I ever wrote.

How long is/was/will be your essay?

--musicmuse1122
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Did either of you spend space talking about your grades or something like that? It's getting perilously close to the deadline and I'm still wondering how I'm going to fill all that blank space... :-/
 
musicmuse1122 said:
Did either of you spend space talking about your grades or something like that? It's getting perilously close to the deadline and I'm still wondering how I'm going to fill all that blank space... :-/
Click to expand...

Well how much space do you have left?

If you're talking about 5250 characters and the essay has resolved itself, then don't worry about it. If you're talking about 5000 characters then you might have a problem.

I always thought that most people just wrote a whole ton and then cut it down to fit. That's what I did.
 
My essay right now is pretty much tied up, but is clocking in at aroung 3500 characters, which is a bit small, it seems.

So I'm wondering whether I need to expand it, or if I should leave it be - I thought I'd do a poll of this awesome website that I discovered last week...
 
musicmuse1122 said:
My essay right now is pretty much tied up, but is clocking in at aroung 3500 characters, which is a bit small, it seems.

So I'm wondering whether I need to expand it, or if I should leave it be - I thought I'd do a poll of this awesome website that I discovered last week...
Click to expand...

Your essay could be amazing for all I know, but that seems quite short. Just try blabbering for a while until you finish some thoughts and look back over it and cut out the bs. That's about all I can say.

Then again, yours could be short, succint, and amazing. Ultimately you are the one that will have to make the call.
 
Was your personal statement longer than your college application essays by a significant amount (compared to say, the common app)? Did you use the same approach?
 
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The hardest part of writing the personal statement is usually cutting enough out to make it fit.

Be sure to have many people read it.
 
musicmuse1122 said:
My essay right now is pretty much tied up, but is clocking in at aroung 3500 characters, which is a bit small, it seems.

So I'm wondering whether I need to expand it, or if I should leave it be - I thought I'd do a poll of this awesome website that I discovered last week...
Click to expand...

I am in exactly the same boat and I questioned myself as well. I stopped fixating on the character max and told myself that if what I had to say required 3500 characters and not 5300 then so be it. I think that adcoms can see the fluff. I focused on the "why medicine", "what was your motivation", "why the dip in grades", "goals and aspirations", etc. I am straight to the point. The ECs Ive written more briefly. Besides, there is the secondaries that will require more writing as well that I will dedicate to specific events that were not mentioned in my PS. Just my thoughts😀 Good luck
 
I don't see any corrolation between length and quality. Mine is 4800 characters. It's deep and to-the-point.
 
If your essay is short, it is fine. But you better bet there will be expectation of high quality. Personally, I would be worried about 4500 or less
 
5300 in Word was too long when I pasted into AMCAS. I was at about 5285 for it to fit. Weird, but true. 😕
 
My first draft was over 7000 characters.

My current draft is 5043 characters for the personal statement. I don't talk about my grades, ECs, research, teaching, or childhood in the essay. (I also have a 1300 character disadvantaged essay and most of my ECs are going to be good sized.) My personal statement focuses exclusively on "Why Medicine, Why Now" since I'm a non-trad student. I don't think a single thing before my senior year of college is mentioned, most of it focuses on the past two years.

Having been a SDN personal statement reader, I would say I would rather see a 3000 character engaging essay that answers the question "Why Medicine" than to see a 5300 character essay that just repeats information in the application.
 
I tried to keep mine at a page on the dot. I don't know the characters, but I didn't want it to be some overwhelming thing. One of the ways people look for good writing is by how concise it is. There are far too many hacks that pump out works about 30 times longer than need be.

The first draft should just involve writing. You're putting all of your ideas and your story on a piece of paper. I recommend handwriting the first copy. This is more of a mind dump. If you need a few beers or something to get emotional, then so be. The emotion and significance is what makes it interesting.

The second draft should really try to get rid of everything that isn't part of a solid and unifying theme (and some things that are). You should EASILY cut out about 25% by doing this. I usually have 2 or 3 very different people read over something and mark up what they like and dislike.

The third draft involves finding the best and most concise wording/phrasing for everything. You will also put everything humanly possible into active voice. Big words aren't always impressive and unless they are part of your daily repertoire, I'd avoid them.

The fourth and final draft should involve all the grammar nazi issues.

What makes sense and what doesn't. If you do all the stuff right then you should eliminate 50+% of the fluff and have a polished, concise essay.
 
sorry to resurrect an old, but important, thread --- how long would something like this be (5300 characters) as a Word Doc?
 
I would not make your personal statement more than 1 page. The admissions committee is no doubt reading hundreds, if not thousands of these essays every application cycle. I'm also willing to bet that a lot of them start to sound similar after awhile. You should be able to say what you need to say in one page, anything longer might start to try the reader's patience. The average one spaced page in a word document contains about 500 words, or around 3000 characters. I would aim for that.
 
I was told to keep it as close to a page as possible because not everyone will deign to read more than that. I originally had an essay that was 5297 but then I cut out an entire paragraph and basically placed that information into my Work/Activities section.
 
I think if you have just a small number of short stories (one or two sentences each) it fills up quite fast.
 
drechie said:
sorry to resurrect an old, but important, thread --- how long would something like this be (5300 characters) as a Word Doc?
Click to expand...

It'd be about a single page. That's more than enough to say what you need to say.
 
Mine is 5298. I wish I had about 500 more to use, but I'm content enough with it as it is.
 
Sorry to re-bump an old thread, but in terms of length:

1. Is your PS supposed to read like a traditional essay that has 5 paragraphs? Can it be 4 paragraphs, or would that seem weird in any way? My PS is 5 paragraphs now but I recently got feedback that I should take out 1 entire paragraph and stick to telling two stories that connect a theme, rather than 3, which is what I have now. If I do cut it out, I'd be pretty much right at 5300, or in fact slightly over as I'm currently over by quite a bit.

2. Also, When you talk about it being "1 page", how does it translate to one page when they read it on AMCAS since you're not technically uploading a word document where it can tell you how long the paper is?

Please respond as soon as you can as I want to submit this PS within the next 2 days max. Thank you
 
AquaticSunrise13 said:
Sorry to re-bump an old thread, but in terms of length:

1. Is your PS supposed to read like a traditional essay that has 5 paragraphs? Can it be 4 paragraphs, or would that seem weird in any way? My PS is 5 paragraphs now but I recently got feedback that I should take out 1 entire paragraph and stick to telling two stories that connect a theme, rather than 3, which is what I have now. If I do cut it out, I'd be pretty much right at 5300, or in fact slightly over as I'm currently over by quite a bit.

2. Also, When you talk about it being "1 page", how does it translate to one page when they read it on AMCAS since you're not technically uploading a word document where it can tell you how long the paper is?

Please respond as soon as you can as I want to submit this PS within the next 2 days max. Thank you
Click to expand...

Your PS can literally be in any format you want it to be. Have an introduction and a conclusion but you don't need to introduce your body paragraphs in the introduction like we were taught to do in traditional essay writing. Like someone said above, your essay should answer "Why medicine" pretty clearly without blatantly saying "I chose medicine because..." Whoever told you to stick to two stories that connect a theme, obviously that third story wasn't impactful. Obviously have others read it but, if one person found that story unnecessary then maybe it is. My advice: If it gets you right at 5300, just take it out. As long as the question "why medicine" is still answered with the other two stories

Since you are inputting your essay in to AMCAS, once you print your application, you can see how it actually looks. It's basically just a bunch of text mushed together in a window. This is why I used 4 characters to be able to enter a space between each paragraph instead of the typical "tab indentation". See how I separated this paragraph from the one above? That's what I did in my PS. I feel it makes it easier to read for ADCOMS because it isn't just a bug blob of text which can be overwhelming. Good luck!
 
The general consensus by pre-med advisers is to make your PS 1/2 to 1 page single spaced. Mine was slightly over that. I tried! I really did 🙁 But I too was almost at my word limit capacity
 
I just wrote what I felt like I wanted to say without ranting on extensively. Ended at around 4500, which is oddly enough the AACOMAS PS length. I may be set to use my PS for both.
 
TPH225 said:
Your PS can literally be in any format you want it to be. Have an introduction and a conclusion but you don't need to introduce your body paragraphs in the introduction like we were taught to do in traditional essay writing. Like someone said above, your essay should answer "Why medicine" pretty clearly without blatantly saying "I chose medicine because..." Whoever told you to stick to two stories that connect a theme, obviously that third story wasn't impactful. Obviously have others read it but, if one person found that story unnecessary then maybe it is. My advice: If it gets you right at 5300, just take it out. As long as the question "why medicine" is still answered with the other two stories

Since you are inputting your essay in to AMCAS, once you print your application, you can see how it actually looks. It's basically just a bunch of text mushed together in a window. This is why I used 4 characters to be able to enter a space between each paragraph instead of the typical "tab indentation". See how I separated this paragraph from the one above? That's what I did in my PS. I feel it makes it easier to read for ADCOMS because it isn't just a bug blob of text which can be overwhelming. Good luck!
Click to expand...

Did you indent the beginning of each paragraph or did you leave it with no indentation?
 
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You can actually indent by clicking the space button repeatedly. I checked it out and saw what it would look like on the printed version, and it was indented. Also for showing a line in between different paragraphs, it doesn't let you do more than one line. I wanted to indent more to make it not as close to each other. Do people usually people only leave one line in between each paragraph?
 
MedicineN'Jazz said:
The general consensus by pre-med advisers is to make your PS 1/2 to 1 page single spaced. Mine was slightly over that. I tried! I really did 🙁 But I too was almost at my word limit capacity
Click to expand...

It's been a while since I went through the process of applying to med schools, and thus things may have changed drastically that I am unaware of, but this is good advice. I've sat on the other side when interviewing surgery applicants my chief year and I can tell you right now, PS that are more than a page long just don't get read or skimmed at best. There are just too many applications to get through. Say what you need with brevity and it will be read in its entirety. The funny thing is that this translates, for one day you will have to with brevity present a patient to your attending and it can't be too long or too short, it needs to have all the right stuff in a nicely packaged morsel. There's an art to it and it starts now. Good luck. Cheers.
 
TypeADissection said:
It's been a while since I went through the process of applying to med schools, and thus things may have changed drastically that I am unaware of, but this is good advice. I've sat on the other side when interviewing surgery applicants my chief year and I can tell you right now, PS that are more than a page long just don't get read or skimmed at best. There are just too many applications to get through. Say what you need with brevity and it will be read in its entirety. The funny thing is that this translates, for one day you will have to with brevity present a patient to your attending and it can't be too long or too short, it needs to have all the right stuff in a nicely packaged morsel. There's an art to it and it starts now. Good luck. Cheers.
Click to expand...

I feel that in order to have it on one page you'd have to have only like 4200 characters, which is very tough. I'm at 4950 and it's like 1 page and 1 paragraph on the next page.
 
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