Personal Statement Format Problems

[lama]

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Anyone else having trouble with the format of your personal statement after saving it on ERAS? I have tried both cutting and pasting from word and when that didn't work, I began typing it online.

Heres my problem: After saving the statement, ERAS shows you what the final document will look like when it's presented to the PD's. The sentences are cut randomly
(like this) with hard returns and it's all jacked up. In Word, my PS is looks great and there are no special format issues. I have literally tried 20 times to correct this proble but still no luck. Anyone have any pointers for this problem? Thanks.

 

[MD Dreams]

I believe your file needs to in a (.txt) format. This is not, I believe, the format that word uses. If you go to the ERAS site and then click Using MyERAS and then choose documents, it will explain what you need to do. Le me know if it works, cause I havn't pasted mine yet.

 

[DarksideAllstar]

What I did is what ERAS recommends. I typed my PS into Word using Courier New 10pt font then copied and pasted it into Notepad. In Notepad make sure that the wrap around is turned "off". It should look just like you typed it in Word. Make sure you don't indent any of your paragraphs (stay away from the tab key). Then paste it into ERAS. View it as "print statement" or whatever. I found some red punctuation marks in mine so I changed them in ERAS directly to whatever they were supposed to be. Bam- done! Good luck.

 

[Nerdoscience]

Yeah, those "random" lines are from where Word put then the line breaks. This is not the same as where ERAS puts them.

 

[DreamLover]

What I did is what ERAS recommends. I typed my PS into Word using Courier New 10pt font then copied and pasted it into Notepad. In Notepad make sure that the wrap around is turned "off". It should look just like you typed it in Word. Make sure you don't indent any of your paragraphs (stay away from the tab key). Then paste it into ERAS. View it as "print statement" or whatever. I found some red punctuation marks in mine so I changed them in ERAS directly to whatever they were supposed to be. Bam- done! Good luck.

I did the exact same thing...once I corrected those red upside down question marks with the correct punctuation...I was good to go

 

[mercury1980]

the best way to do it is to type it in notepad rather than word. That way its aa .txt file and u dont have any problems with format.

 

[Bevo]

I took the tabs and inserted 5 spaces instead.

What I did was I just copy/pasted mine. Looked how it read and stuff. Saved it. And then clicked on Print PS. to see how it looked there as well.

First time around the preview looked good but I clicked on Print PS, the essay was all jacked up.

Takes some fooling around with.

 

[justwondering]

has anyone purposely put in question marks in the personal statement? the two that i put in are showing up red. this is aside from the upside down ones they use. they are not errors as far as i can tell...

 

[Sanchik]

i have red question marks all over my statement and don't really know how to fix it. it's usually where the apostrophe is in. examle- patient's looks like patient?s. what do i do?

 

[jennyboo]

Copy and paste your essay from Word (which is causing the stupid breaks) into a text editor such as Notepad. Then edit until each paragraph just keeps going and going and going sideways across the screen. (i.e. until you are forced to scroll horizontally in Notepad all the way to the right where your paragraph ends.)

Then save it in Notepad as essay.txt and copy from there to ERAS.

The " " marks can also be fixed this way in Notepad. Just do the above, then type over all the old quotation marks with new ones.

 

[gagolden]

What I did is do my PS in word. Then when I was done, save a new copy of your file in "plain text." format, (instead of a word doc.) then when the new window opens up save it under ASCII text. This is the "code" for computer crappy language.

I then copied out of my new file into ERAS without any problems.

 

[liverboy]

I was frustrated because none of the advice above was working on my Mac while using Safari. I switched to Firefox and had no problems just cutting and pasting from Word.

 

[Hard24Get]

I was frustrated because none of the advice above was working on my Mac while using Safari. I switched to Firefox and had no problems just cutting and pasting from Word.

YAy! Thanks, you saved me! 😍

 

[parvas24]

just a quick question for entering the personal statement in ERAS .... do you write the title for instance "Personal statement - Anesthesia" above the body of the personal statement , then copy paste into the personal statement section of ERAS , then label it as PERSONAL statement -Anesthesia ....
also do you need to enter your name and AAMC number above the personal statement body ?....advice needed 😕.....thanx

 

[KurtGoedel]

Just a word of caution. Use IE in preference to firefox while using ERAS. Some parts of the application do not run on firefox.I know firefox is great, but my friend had a problem last year which the ERAS people had to sort out. Turned out the problem was with the browser.

 

[JulianCrane]

I have tried multiple times to do what ERAS says but I still have not been able to have a decent looking personal statement. Anyone with a Mac having these problems?

 

[Hard24Get]

I have tried multiple times to do what ERAS says but I still have not been able to have a decent looking personal statement. Anyone with a Mac having these problems?

It doesn't work on Safari (see liverboy's post above). Beyond that, I had zero problems filling out my app with firefox on my Mac.