Personal statement

[Entirecropslost]

So for ERAS when you put in your personal statement any funny characters come up as squares and when I type a question mark it always comes back red. That's normal right!?They say special characters come up as red question marks and to make sure you want the question mark there. Why don't they just say question marks come up red and unusual characters come up as a square?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[SimonSez]

So for ERAS when you put in your personal statement any funny characters come up as squares and when I type a question mark it always comes back red. That's normal right!?They say special characters come up as red question marks and to make sure you want the question mark there. Why don't they just say question marks come up red and unusual characters come up as a square?

The best thing to do is to write your PS on a text document and then copy and paste from that. If you copy and paste from Microsoft Word then those funny characters can appear. There's a little note on that at the top of the box where you have to type in your PS on the MyERAS site. That's where I got my info from.

 

[Entirecropslost]

Yea, even if I type directly into ERAS a question mark, it will turn red when you preview what you wrote. It did it whether I typed it in using Firefox or Explorer This is normal right?

 

[nitsasckya]

Yes, if you wrote your personal statement with question marks in it, they will appear red when you preview it on ERAS. That's normal.

If you copied/pasted it into ERAS from another program, certain characters (like quotation marks or apostrophes) will be formatted wrong, most likely. Those will also appear as red question marks when you preview your PS as well.