Question about max length of personal statement...

Mine is under 4000 characters but when I put it onto UCAS it's 6 lines over... but if I take out the spaces between paragraphs it would be perfect. Can I do that? I'm only asking because the examples on TSR don't have spaces between the lines.. but it might be a stupid question. Thanks!

Reply 1

inksplodge

Erm... You could. I don't see why not?

Reply 2

Nicolish

Its harder to read without lines

Reply 3

Rubberband

The exact same thing happened to me last week (really annoying, isn't it?). I took them out, as I was told that UCAS Apply will remove all blank spaces (including paragraph spacing) when processing it anyway.

Reply 4

sweetcheeks01

Rubberband

Ohhh are you sure?? The same thing is happened to my friend.. do you know if there's a link anywhere where it says that? I will strangle myself before I have to cut it down any more. I simply refuse.

Reply 5

Rubberband

sweetcheeks01

Ohhh are you sure?? The same thing is happened to my friend.. do you know if there's a link anywhere where it says that? I will strangle myself before I have to cut it down any more. I simply refuse.

Well, I wasn't sure about it either - I didn't want to do this if it wasn't true, and then look like an idiot who couldn't do paragraphs, so I checked with my college's student advice office, and they said that it was true (but they are generally a bit clueless, so...I suppose the best thing to do would be to check with your own college/school, just in case!).

One thing to check for (I got it down from six lines over to one line over by doing this) - go to the page on apply where you can preview your entire application. Look at the personal statement, and you'll see that some lines have just one or two words on them, at the end of paragraphs. Adjust the sentence so that it fits on the last line, and that's one down :smile:

. You might not have to bother taking out the paragraph spacing then. Like you, I absolutely did not want to take anything else out - it was tedious enough getting it down to the character limit :frown:

Reply 6

alex_hk90

sweetcheeks01

I had a similar problem so I just started each paragraph on a new line instead of leaving a line space. And although UCAS Apply removes the paragraph spaces when you preview it, I'm quite sure that the universities do see any spaces that you leave.

Reply 7

Admonitor

I did the same when I applied last year. Too many lines, so just started a new paragraph on a new line without spacing. Did me no harm whatsoever.

Reply 8

RightSaidJames

Yeah, a new line for a new paragraph is fine, it's the content not the typesetting that is important, and as long as things are in paragraphs it doesn't matter.

Reply 9

sweetcheeks01

This is all good to know.. I think I'm gonna leave out the line spacing because as I said, I refuse to cut it down.

Thanks everyone

Reply 10

Good bloke

This always seems to come up. First of all, the blank lines you put in your CV are seen by the admissions tutors. I know this because several of them have told me how refreshing it is when they see one that includes them. And there is a way of seeing the correct version on the UCAS screen, but I can't remember what it is offhand.

Inclusion of blank lines between paragraphs improves the readability of your PS by a significant amount and makes things much easier for the admissions tutor. It also provides valuable clues about the structure which, again, helps get your message across.

The tutors get eye strain through having to wade though piles of rubbish, quite often without the blank lines, and when they see a good, readable PS it shines out like a shaft of gold in the dark (or was that a stream of bat's urine?). Always think of the reader when you write something like this.

I strongly recommend you include them. The improvement they offer far outweighs any benefit you might get from cramming in further text. And don't forget that, in practice, it is always the 47 line limit that matters, not the 4,000 character limit - most good statements are around 3,000 to 3,500 characters long and statements that bump up against the 4,000 limit are strongly improved by editing down anyway.

I'm not saying that you won't get away without blank lines - particularly if you are a strong candidate in a non-competitive subject - but they will certainly make a positive difference.

Reply 11

Echolife

I didn't want to start a new thread but have a ps question.
I've put my ps in, pressed preview and it accepts it as the right amount of characters and length. It looks normal on the preview screen. However when I click print page at the top right of the screen, it prints it out but on the printed version there is a problem. On one line, line 8, the sentence appears higher than the number 8 and on the following line just below the number 8there is just one word, 'a' then the words carry on on line 9 as normal. If I go on view all the personal statement looks fine. Any idea what's happening?

It's ok, problem solved. When you print it out from the 'view all' section it's fine. The reason must have been that on the other section when they have the line numbers down the side there isn't enough room for the whole line you want to include to be printed.