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UCAS personal statement line limit

How do I cut down on the number of lines I have? I cut down my personal statement quite a lot so it's short and direct so it's 3998 characters (just about made it) and I was proud of that. I was about to save it as a draft when I noticed that it was 5 lines above the line limit. How can I fix this? I've tried my best to cut down things and was finally happy with my personal statement - I even asked my friends/family and they can't see how I can get rid of any excess detail so what do I do? It's all essential content and supercurriculars etc. What is meant by "lines"
(edited 7 months ago)
Reply 1
It's "lines" in terms of how UCAS formats it, so it may be different to the line count if you've typed it up in something like Word.

Easiest way to cut down a few lines is to save it as a draft within UCAS (you may need to temporarily remove the last few sentences to do so) and look for any lines that only have one or two words on them, and aim to rephrase these sentences/paragraphs to be just a little bit shorter. It's much easier to cut one word than a whole line.

If that isn't enough, then you may need to cut some content. Have you spent a long time talking about your A level/equivalent subjects, or extracurriculars that don't really relate to the course or the skills required?

(Note: don't post any parts of your statement on the public forums or in private messages to people, if you need help rephrasing/shortening certain sentences or sections then ask someone you trust like a teacher or family member.)
Original post by Interea
It's "lines" in terms of how UCAS formats it, so it may be different to the line count if you've typed it up in something like Word.

Easiest way to cut down a few lines is to save it as a draft within UCAS (you may need to temporarily remove the last few sentences to do so) and look for any lines that only have one or two words on them, and aim to rephrase these sentences/paragraphs to be just a little bit shorter. It's much easier to cut one word than a whole line.

If that isn't enough, then you may need to cut some content. Have you spent a long time talking about your A level/equivalent subjects, or extracurriculars that don't really relate to the course or the skills required?

(Note: don't post any parts of your statement on the public forums or in private messages to people, if you need help rephrasing/shortening certain sentences or sections then ask someone you trust like a teacher or family member.)

Yeah I ended up just removing an extra line for each paragraph, I realised when I typed it into word I clicked enter twice to separate the paragraphs which wasn't needed. Thanks for the help though! Although I kind of sent my ps to someone on linked in but he's been in university for 3 years and offered to help, any chance it can be plagiarised now? he helped me a little but I have his linkedin and email and the email I sent him the personal statement so?

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