Personal Statement - Length

[stickgirl390]

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I've been working on perfecting my personal statement for a long time, and I think I finally have the best version ready. Problem is: it's only 3285 characters of the 5300 character maximum. Is that bad? Are we expected to fill as much of the space as we can?

 

[jcorpsmanMD]

I've been working on perfecting my personal statement for a long time, and I think I finally have the best version ready. Problem is: it's only 3285 characters of the 5300 character minimum. Is that bad? Are we expected to fill as much of the space as we can?

That's way too short.. so yes, thinking dictates you should try to write a good length. Doesn't mean you need to write useless fluff to meet the character limit though, I think my PS was roughly ~4900 characters.

 

[stickgirl390]

@LizzyM Im interested in your insight if you have the time.

 

[LizzyM]

@LizzyM Im interested in your insight if you have the time.

that's 62% of maximum.... it is fully covers "why medicine" it will be a huge relief to anyone who has slogged through 10 others that took 5298 characters to do the same.

 

[UBLI-EINSTEIN]

lol, I took about 5169 characters with spaces.

 

[stickgirl390]

I disagree with the idea that you have to fill the space given. Virtually, every PS and activity description I read or edit can be cut down, sometimes by 50%. When writing a PS, I would go all the way down to sentence by sentence to analyze, and make clearer, sharper, and enlightening to the reader. As I always say a medical school application should be a coherent, concise and compelling narrative showing a strong pattern of motivation, commitment and achievement

This instills more confindence, thank you. I did analyze mine sentence by sentence. I love the Shakespeare quote. 🙂