PharmCAS Personal Statement Blah's

[Mimnguyen]

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Alright, 2004 applicants, it's time to send in our complaints to PharmCAS, AACP, and pharm schools. We are not going to pay all of this money, not including the supplemental ap fees, to have a personal statement sent to the schools as one long paragraph.

Can you imagine trying to read hundreds of 2 page statements with no indentations? I know I can't write a whole page about the same idea. And how is it going to sound when you try to change topics without making another paragraph. This is going to show how bad we are as writers, i.e., not making sense jumping from topic to topic.

I've already emailed AACP and I don't think PharmCAS is going to do anything about it unless they hear from higher authority. This problem is absurd because text programs have gone above and beyond what is needed. Please email the schools you will be applying to as well and tell them the situation and if they want to have the PS sent with the supp aps.

Here's the email I received and sent to PharmCAS. They have no excuse to fix the problem. And it's not copying from Word that is the problem. It's the text program they're using, which sucks.
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Dear Mimi,

When typing the personal statement, you are not able to use the tabs, indents, etc. within the PharmCAS application. Unforunately, there is not away to correct this problem at the present time because the many different versions of Word may sometimes alter the paragraphing when copying.

Melissa Robinson
Customer Support Representative
PharmCAS
19 Main Street
Watertown, MA 02472
[email protected]
Tel: 617-612-2050
Fax: 617-612-2051
TTY: 617-612-2060

-----Original Message-----
From: Mimi Nguyen [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2003 7:26 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Personal Statement

Hi,

I printed a copy of "Other Sections" of my application and saw that my personal statement isn't printed with the spaces I made to symbolize an indentation for a new paragraph. I noticed I could not tab for the indent so I put 5 spaces instead. Is there a correct way to do this? My personal statement does not look easy to read as one long paragraph.

Thanks,
Mimi
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Tell us how it goes for you.

-Mimi

 

[28657]

Since I won't have to deal with this problem, I applied last year, I can only suggest to make your text field look like a formatted Word document by using spaces and maybe extra lines.

I bet that students who take an extra effort in the appearance of their personal statement will get much much higher credit than those who don't.

And, really, you can't tell the difference between a tab and five spaces. But it does suck to have to go back a reformat your entire personal statement.

Maybe when making your complaints you can suggest them to get a rich text enabled program which will save things as .RTF, which will remember your formatting from your Word or WordPerfect programs. (I don't know anything about this, I just asked my husband who's a computer programmer and that's what he said.)

 

[28657]

Hmmm...the last comment i posted was supposed to have indentations but it didn't save it. So now all I can suggest is separating each paragraph with a blank line. I guess using 5 spaces isnt the same as a tab???

 

[hmtran]

I had the same problem too! But the second time around the techie said that although my PS might look like one long paragraph after it's submitted, to them it's separated out into paragraphs. So, I really don't know about the situation, but I gave up on them a while back. They take FOREVER to process my application. I submitted it in the middle of July, and it didn't get mailed until the 8th of August. 3 weeks! Crazy. But anyways, hopefully yours is okay. =)

 

[Mimnguyen]

Well, I tried Amanda's advice and it's a no go. It's a text box like the ones we type posts/replies in, except it does not keep any formatting. PharmCAS doesn't want any formatting, but indents are necessary. What are they thinking?? Thanks Amanda for the tip. I don't think anything is going to work unless they change their program.

hmtran, the tech probably said that to calm some nerves. I bet they don't even care or know.

 

[TC714]

I believe I have the same problem with the personal essay also as Mimnguyen stated. I also emailed and still got no response from PharmCAS up til now...I am not sure my email was lost or something like that....

 

[LoneCoyote]

I tried everything to make my essay look better. I tried doing 5 spaces and it did not work. I tried leaving a blank line. It did not work. I tried using tab. Every time my PS looked like one crappy huge paragraph. I finally gave up and submitted in early July. It has already been sent to the schools so I hope it looks okay.

For those of you applying to UCSD beware the same thing occurs with their online application. I had the same problem and after submitting the longer essay it looked like one huge paragraph. I guess there's not much we can do about it though.

 

[Roxicet]

I had a similar problem. My PS turned into one long paragraph, and all of my apostrophes turned into question marks. I called pharmcas instead of emailing, and she said that the PS will print exactly as it looks on the screen. So before I submitted my app, I edited it in the box (i.e. added five-space indentations, turned the question marks back into apostrophes), and saved it. It looked okay when I submitted it. I hope it stayed that way.

Also, don't forget to check your word count before you submit it. They said only 4500 characters (including spaces) will print. Even if you can see your whole PS in the box, anything after 4500 characters will get cut off. That's another problem with their text box.

I was very careful before I submitted my app. That's a lot of money to waste if they don't fix the problems or if the pharm schools don't complain.

I hope everyting works out for everyone.

 

[Mimnguyen]

Here's an email I got after emailing AACP.

Mimi-
To denote a paragraph break in your PharmCAS personal statement, simply create a line break between the paragraphs using the enter key. By inserting a blank line, your designated pharmacy schools will be able to easily distinguish between paragraphs.

We will consider your formatting suggestion for year 2 of the Service and appreciate your
feedback.

Best wishes in your educational endeavors.
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Elisabeth J. "Libby" Ross, MA
Director, PharmCAS and Student Affairs
American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy
1426 Prince Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
703/739-2330, x1024
[email protected]
www.aacp.org
www.pharmcas.org
________________________________________________

Let's hope this works.

 

[Roxicet]

Turns out my personal statement is one long paragraph too. My corrections didn't work. I emailed Krista at Midwestern-glendale, and this is what she replied:

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Roxanne,

This will not have any impact on your application. We understand that this is the first year with the system and we are expecting a few bugs so the Admissions Committee is cognizant of this.

Krista
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So we should be more concerned about content than appearance. I'm sure most of the PS's they've received so far are huge paragraphs. I'd hate to be on an admissions committee this year.