I'm so annoyed with UCAS character counting in PS

Adjusting your PS by 16 characters isn't going to affect the flow, the impression or the way it reads. You literally have to change a few words. Your PS is no where near good enough that 16 characters difference is going to have any dramatic impact.

What do you think you are going to do when you have to hand in essays and stick to a word limit? Refuse to do it and say that its unfair because it affects the flow? Get a grip.

I wrote mine in Word and found that UCAS overestimated the length of my statement by 16 characters - I think it is the line breaks, as others have said. I totally understand that you're frustrated: my statement was over 8000 characters when I first wrote it, and my 'bare minimum' ended up at about 5000. In order to shorten it I had to entirely remove one book I discussed, and radically trim the detail I went into about the other issues. Remember, at anywhere that interviews they can pick out something on your PS and let you elaborate, so you don't necessarily have to write down everything you know.

Again, as others have said, 16 characters is not a lot. Consider replacing some instances of the word 'and' with an & - although make sure you know when it is grammatically correct to do so. Or take out a 'particularly' or an 'especially', replace longer words with shorter synonyms etc.

Out of interest, what courses are you applying for?

Adjusting your PS by 16 characters isn't going to affect the flow, the impression or the way it reads. You literally have to change a few words. Your PS is no where near good enough that 16 characters difference is going to have any dramatic impact.

What do you think you are going to do when you have to hand in essays and stick to a word limit? Refuse to do it and say that its unfair because it affects the flow? Get a grip.

however, it is more about the information than the flow. The biggest concern would be typos and correct sentence structure. Choice of wording, especially on filler words, or words that are excessively long, is not too important, and in some cases (especially with the latter) the admissions tutors will prefer a statement that has obviously been written by you, and not by a dictionary. If you've got anything that, chances are, someone reading it will have to google, then you could perhaps try changing that

I wrote mine in Word and found that UCAS overestimated the length of my statement by 16 characters - I think it is the line breaks, as others have said. I totally understand that you're frustrated: my statement was over 8000 characters when I first wrote it, and my 'bare minimum' ended up at about 5000. In order to shorten it I had to entirely remove one book I discussed, and radically trim the detail I went into about the other issues. Remember, at anywhere that interviews they can pick out something on your PS and let you elaborate, so you don't necessarily have to write down everything you know.

Again, as others have said, 16 characters is not a lot. Consider replacing some instances of the word 'and' with an & - although make sure you know when it is grammatically correct to do so. Or take out a 'particularly' or an 'especially', replace longer words with shorter synonyms etc.

Out of interest, what courses are you applying for?

Essays are logical. You're given a word limit, and that word limit is met, and handed in. Here, it is miscalculating something, and now I am told I have one line over as well, simply because their statement box is rubbish, and doesn't give you enough room to type the 4000 characters which we are guaranteed! It does change the way it reads, I have been reading it for the whole day, taking out the odd word, and saving it again, and having it tell me AGAIN it's too long, when actually it's absolutely fine. I have been cutting things out, deleting nice phrases, and actually it is really annoying me, so your idiotic comments are not helping. My statement was fine this morning, just how I wanted it, and now because of this thing, I'm having to start over. You haven't read it, you haven't looked at it, so you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. End of.

ampersands (&) are great but not that grammatically correct, you'd be better off replacing it with "so" or using a comma...

how many books did you have?!

Wow. So despite the fact that they state the length on their website, which I followed fully, and edited my statement to match what they said were their requirements, it's my fault, when they calculate a statement of 3998 characters to be 4016? Hm. Seems to me that it is entirely their fault. Thanks for your sarcasm in the last line there - what are you, one of their employees? If you didn't have anything productive to suggest, please don't post on this thread.

Wow, impressive, cutting it down from 8,000! Mine was never over 5, when I first wrote it, so wow. I'm not sure if my universities do interviews, I'm applying to Nottingham and Manchester as my top two? I have taken out so much, and I'm still one line over! *pulls out hair*

I'm applying to do Modern Foreign Languages German, and Russian

Considering i have written personal statements for undergrad and achieved 5 offers, and personal statements for masters courses and now study at one of the country's more competitive universities, I'd say I have a fairly good idea about it.

You're claiming that UCAS has miscalculated the character count, how do you know it's not Notepad that's counted incorrectly? Unless of course you've sat there and personally counted every single character?

In hindsight, you should have monitored your word count as you made your statement, and used a character count website to verify it.

I wouldn't blame UCAS, it's self-inflicted on your part, so it's nobody's fault. Just a misunderstanding.

You either should redraft it, cut parts out, or perhaps look for synonyms.

I can guarantee there is something that you could cut out from your statement. Get someone to read it over and they immediately notice what could be cut out/waffle.

I've just finished my statement after 18 redrafts so I understand your pain.

An easy way to check, as it's not always apparent from the uni websites, is to check on the Choices page of Apply. When you put in the uni and course choice, if the uni interviews for that course then a warning appears under the choice, letting you know. I am applying to Manchester as well, although for molecular biology, and I know they interview for that.

Is it possible for you to merge two paragraphs? That would be an easy way to save a line.

Both Word and Notepad say the same. UCAS form was the odd one out. Seems unlikely.

Well woop-ee-doo for you! Obviously this means you always know best. *bows*

I dont know best, but I clearly know better than you.

I'm just saying, don't claim something you have no proof of.

Don't leave lines between paragraphs, just start a new line.