General Admissions & OTCAS OT school personal statement

[medstar11]

Hello everyone,
I am asking for a friend as she is applying to OT school and is working on her personal statement. I know there is no limit posted on the application itself for length of personal statement but can anyone give me an average for length. Hers is about 2-3 pages or almost 2000 words and that sounds like a ton to me. I am trying to convince her to cut it quite significantly but it would help if I could have some information to back it up. Thank you in advance.

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[nOTeworthy]

Hello everyone,
I am asking for a friend as she is applying to OT school and is working on her personal statement. I know there is no limit posted on the application itself for length of personal statement but can anyone give me an average for length. Hers is about 2-3 pages or almost 2000 words and that sounds like a ton to me. I am trying to convince her to cut it quite significantly but it would help if I could have some information to back it up. Thank you in advance.

I had to apply through OTCAS and one other site. There was a limit of 250 words and 300 for each question. I don't think they want to read that much. LoL

 

[corn17]

Hello everyone,
I am asking for a friend as she is applying to OT school and is working on her personal statement. I know there is no limit posted on the application itself for length of personal statement but can anyone give me an average for length. Hers is about 2-3 pages or almost 2000 words and that sounds like a ton to me. I am trying to convince her to cut it quite significantly but it would help if I could have some information to back it up. Thank you in advance.

Mine was about 1200 words and that was after I cut it down a lot so I can definitely see why she wants to keep it longer. I emailed one of my schools because it was about 80 words over their requirement just to make sure it was ok if I kept it. They said the rule wasn't a strict one, but that I should be careful so as to not lose the reader's interest. One suggestion I would have is to make sure that whatever she is talking about is nothing that can be directly inferred from her resume/experiences. Another would be to look at it from the admissions' perspective -- is what she wrote something that other applicants probably included? I guess I would just focus on things that she believes set her apart from other applicants. Because everyone wants to help people and make a difference -- how has she shown that in the past?

 

[medstar11]

Mine was about 1200 words and that was after I cut it down a lot so I can definitely see why she wants to keep it longer. I emailed one of my schools because it was about 80 words over their requirement just to make sure it was ok if I kept it. They said the rule wasn't a strict one, but that I should be careful so as to not lose the reader's interest. One suggestion I would have is to make sure that whatever she is talking about is nothing that can be directly inferred from her resume/experiences. Another would be to look at it from the admissions' perspective -- is what she wrote something that other applicants probably included? I guess I would just focus on things that she believes set her apart from other applicants. Because everyone wants to help people and make a difference -- how has she shown that in the past?

Thank you I appreciate the help. I definitely will let her know. That is my concern is that the reader will lose interest because of the length.

 

[nOTeworthy]

That is my concern is that the reader will lose interest because of the length.

That and I think it displays better writing skills (which is major in this field) to sell yourself quickly compared to those that need a novel to do it.

 

[kangaroos12]

Hello everyone,
I am asking for a friend as she is applying to OT school and is working on her personal statement. I know there is no limit posted on the application itself for length of personal statement but can anyone give me an average for length. Hers is about 2-3 pages or almost 2000 words and that sounds like a ton to me. I am trying to convince her to cut it quite significantly but it would help if I could have some information to back it up. Thank you in advance.

There is not a word, character, or page limit on the OTCAS personal statement. There is, however a file limit 5M. I called OTCAS when completing mine to verify. I would recommend to your friend of course address the prompt but also have professors or writing tutors review her essay. For some programs that is the only thing they require/read. For other programs there is a questions sections which DOES have a character or word count-read carefully.

 

[HME4OT]

One of the schools I applied to set a one page limit. I am not an expert, but if you can be succinct and also swift in your delivery, that might be what the readers are looking at. I'd stick to around 5 paragraphs.

 

[BeOT]

Mine was 2 pages long