Personal Statement: did you use all 4500 characters?

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161927

PharmCAS gives us 4500 characters for the Personal Statement. Did you use them all? Is it necessary to use them all?
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DCODY said:
PharmCAS gives us 4500 characters for the Personal Statement. Did you use them all? Is it necessary to use them all?
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I used 4498 characters and it took me like 6 revisions to cut it down to that.

( I had a lot to say this application cycle ) :)
 
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cheburashka said:
I used 4498 characters and it took me like 6 revisions to cut it down to that.

( I had a lot to say this application cycle ) :)
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Me too- about ten revisions to cut it down!
 
I have never enjoyed writing about myself, so I will be happy when this PS is finished. I'm aiming for 4,000 characters, and I'm almost there. (blog entry ends here)
 
I originally had like 4000. My proofreader gave me some stuff to add and cut so it ended up around 4300. When I was writing it though, I was really conscious to cut unneccessary words.
 
Well...I forgot how much I used but it was almost to the max :p. I didn't write so much just for the heck of filling the 4500 characters though. I wrote that much because I had a lot to say :oops:. Hehe...I guess as long as its relevant and interesting then all is cool cool :).
 
4491 characters. I had almost 5500 in my first draft, so I had to go through many revisions. Not to hack on anyone, but a very experienced pre-health adviser once told me that if you don't use the most out of the available space, then you're crazy to not take advantage of the opportunity to sell yourself to the adcom. After all, it probably takes a lot more than 4500 characters (which is only a page length) to tell them who you are, your experiences, your goals, etc... so why shortchange yourself at, say 3000 characters?
 
inquirer89 said:
4491 characters. I had almost 5500 in my first draft, so I had to go through many revisions. Not to hack on anyone, but a very experienced pre-health adviser once told me that if you don't use the most out of the available space, then you're crazy to not take advantage of the opportunity to sell yourself to the adcom. After all, it probably takes a lot more than 4500 characters (which is only a page length) to tell them who you are, your experiences, your goals, etc... so why shortchange yourself at, say 3000 characters?
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well said. i had a lot to say about myself and i was at 5000 char.
 
4495!!! had tooooo many revisions hehe...
 
^ I was very close to you. 3925!
 
I guess I win. I had 4499 characters after cutting mine down from about 6,500.

I decided to just write everything I felt like needed to be said and then edit with outside help to keep the good stuff, and remove the pointless dribble. ;)

Did you guys notice it even counts blank spaces? I noticed I tried to double space between paragraphs and it counted that as a space. Damn thing!
 
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My original essay was about 6500. Took about 5 revisions to get it down to 4500. For most of the school's I've applied to, I can include the originally cut information in the supplemental app.
 
Mine was 4384! I never really had to cut anything out either.
 
triumphbr said:
I guess I win. I had 4499 characters after cutting mine down from about 6,500.

I decided to just write everything I felt like needed to be said and then edit with outside help to keep the good stuff, and remove the pointless dribble. ;)

Did you guys notice it even counts blank spaces? I noticed I tried to double space between paragraphs and it counted that as a space. Damn thing!
Click to expand...


You should have just put an extra space in there somewhere... LOL


I took 4400+ - Don't remember exact number, but it was more than 4400.
 
No of course not. Remember--less is more.
 
I used the maximum but the Pharmcas essay cut n paste was messed up for some reasons. Well what I did was removed some spaces and cut back some words. I think I ended up 5 characters less. 4500 is actually not enough to tell about myself...sigh.
 
Would it be improper if I did not double space between sentences?

I would love to use those extra spaces for characters -- my last revision only got me back to 4893!
 
transzincIIB said:
I used the maximum but the Pharmcas essay cut n paste was messed up for some reasons. Well what I did was removed some spaces and cut back some words. I think I ended up 5 characters less. 4500 is actually not enough to tell about myself...sigh.
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My cut and paste was also weird and a lot words were missing. The PharmCAS rep said that when they print it out that is not usually the case. Has anybody submitted the PS like that?
 
It's strange, I had 4498 when I had composed it in Word. When I used Firefox to log-in and copy/paste, it said I was over by ~30 words or so.

After reading SDN, I used IE copy/pasted and it was accurately calculated at 4498.

Take as much space as you need, but don't say things that are a) redundant, or b) just there to take up space.
 
Make it concise and to the point.
 
just wondering about how long is 4500 characters? Is it more like a one page or two page essay?
 
DOTAFORLIFE said:
No of course not. Remember--less is more.
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I wouldn't really say "less is more" when you only have a very small amount of room to begin with. I mean, there's a limit to that - you wouldn't write just one short sentence and assume less is more, right?

Like someone said above, this is your time to sell yourself. If you have a great, complete response at 4200 characters then that's wonderful. But if you've got only 2000... you probably need a little more information.
 
DOTAFORLIFE said:
No of course not. Remember--less is more.
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I completely disagree. Especially in this case: applicants are generally more likely to write a lot about themselves, thats why PharmCAS enforced a limit, not a minimum requirement.
 
triumphbr said:
I guess I win. I had 4499 characters after cutting mine down from about 6,500.

I decided to just write everything I felt like needed to be said and then edit with outside help to keep the good stuff, and remove the pointless dribble. ;)

Did you guys notice it even counts blank spaces? I noticed I tried to double space between paragraphs and it counted that as a space. Damn thing!
Click to expand...

OMG! I thought it was 4500 characters without spaces. I have a lot less room than I thought which is good and bad.
 
cdhoward said:
You should have just put an extra space in there somewhere... LOL


I took 4400+ - Don't remember exact number, but it was more than 4400.
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If I remember correctly you have to have less than 4500 .. IE if you actually had 4500 it would tell you that you had to many.

I think... hahah Either way doing that PS was stressful and I feel like some of the best stuff had to be edited out due to the constraints.

How many times in your life do you get the opportunity to "toot your own horn" so to speak. I was taking full advantage of it. ;)
 
triumphbr said:
I guess I win. I had 4499 characters after cutting mine down from about 6,500.

I decided to just write everything I felt like needed to be said and then edit with outside help to keep the good stuff, and remove the pointless dribble. ;)

Did you guys notice it even counts blank spaces? I noticed I tried to double space between paragraphs and it counted that as a space. Damn thing!
Click to expand...

LOL. Originally, I thought we had 5500 characters not 4500. So I kept writing and when I checked I ended up with 6500. I was thinking, great I only have to cut out 1000 characters. Checked on PharmCAS and it was only 4500, so I start freaking out since I'm not sure what to cut. End up cutting it down after 7 revisions to 4499 too. Golly, PS is so stressful when you can't figure out what needs to go.
 
Mine was 3368. Don't need to tell them my life story, just the highlight reel. That's what gets their attention. Just imagine the adcom reading 1000 of these things. Short and sweet's the way to go.
 
Mine was even shorter (and hopefully sweeter) at 2913 characters. Now that all is said and done I regret not selling myself more. Waiting to see if I even get any interviews :scared:
 
It depends on your story. But even if you don't have a long twisted tale to tell, I think it's important to express details.
 
Straight up, I had 7 characters. "You know you want to accept me."
 
greenspleen said:
Is that with or without spaces?
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With spaces.
Also as some above have stated, be mindful that if you compose in Word, you'll likely get ~10-20 characters over the Word count upon pasting into PharmCAS.
 
161927 said:
PharmCAS gives us 4500 characters for the Personal Statement. Did you use them all? Is it necessary to use them all?
Click to expand...

At first I thought that 4500 characters will be a lot to just write about myself... but it turned out that I had to cut down a lot after I finished writing my first draft. So the answer is yes! I used all allowed space.
 
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