The Student Room Group

Cutting PS word count

I've just finished my AS exams and as I'm an early apply (medicine) my school pretty much insist we start drafting our statements now!

By the end of the summer I'll have over 320 hours of course-relevant work experience, plus 33 hours worth of summer courses, as well as all the usual further reading/extracurricular activities stuff.

Roughly 100 hours of my work experience are scheduled to happen this July & August, but I'm already on 3,300 characters on my (4th!) draft, with no conclusion yet either!!

I haven't used any super unnecessary sentences that I can find, and I've already had to really cut down what I've written about the experiences I've already got. If I cut any more, I'll fall into the "telling them what you've done not what you learnt" trap, which I'm keen to avoid.

Does anyone have any good techniques for bringing word/character counts down?

Thank you.
Original post by LRxS
I've just finished my AS exams and as I'm an early apply (medicine) my school pretty much insist we start drafting our statements now!

By the end of the summer I'll have over 320 hours of course-relevant work experience, plus 33 hours worth of summer courses, as well as all the usual further reading/extracurricular activities stuff.

Roughly 100 hours of my work experience are scheduled to happen this July & August, but I'm already on 3,300 characters on my (4th!) draft, with no conclusion yet either!!

I haven't used any super unnecessary sentences that I can find, and I've already had to really cut down what I've written about the experiences I've already got. If I cut any more, I'll fall into the "telling them what you've done not what you learnt" trap, which I'm keen to avoid.

Does anyone have any good techniques for bringing word/character counts down?

Thank you.


Focus on the most important and relevant experiences
Its hard to cut it down-took me like 15 drafts and ended with 47 lines and 4000 characters exactly (yes was pretty proud)- lot of stuff can be rewritten more concisely, look for this, if you have any quotes get rid of them, if you've spoken of any non relevant experience scrap it and replace it when you get more medical experience, if youve waffled about a book you read- cut it down, if your intro is too long, cut it.
Quality is far better than quantity - focus on what you learned/gained from the experiences (and no need to repeat them)
Reply 4
Perhaps don't mention every experience, say that you have however many hundred hours of experience and then talk in depth about the one most profound experience you've had. If you get an interview then that is the time to talk about all of your other experiences
Original post by LRxS
I've just finished my AS exams and as I'm an early apply (medicine) my school pretty much insist we start drafting our statements now!

By the end of the summer I'll have over 320 hours of course-relevant work experience, plus 33 hours worth of summer courses, as well as all the usual further reading/extracurricular activities stuff.

Roughly 100 hours of my work experience are scheduled to happen this July & August, but I'm already on 3,300 characters on my (4th!) draft, with no conclusion yet either!!

I haven't used any super unnecessary sentences that I can find, and I've already had to really cut down what I've written about the experiences I've already got. If I cut any more, I'll fall into the "telling them what you've done not what you learnt" trap, which I'm keen to avoid.

Does anyone have any good techniques for bringing word/character counts down?

Thank you.


Hi there!

All of your experience sounds great - well done!

Our best advice in this situation would be to focus on a few key pieces of work experience in detail, reflecting on what you learned, rather than detailing every summer course or placement you have - as others have said on the thread, quality is much more important than quantity! By focusing on a few of your best examples of work experience/skills/exploration of medicine, you'll hopefully be able to cut down on some characters.

You can also read our Medicine Personal Statement guide for other advice!

Hope this helps! :smile:
The Medic Portal
Reply 6
Original post by LRxS
I've just finished my AS exams and as I'm an early apply (medicine) my school pretty much insist we start drafting our statements now!

By the end of the summer I'll have over 320 hours of course-relevant work experience, plus 33 hours worth of summer courses, as well as all the usual further reading/extracurricular activities stuff.

Roughly 100 hours of my work experience are scheduled to happen this July & August, but I'm already on 3,300 characters on my (4th!) draft, with no conclusion yet either!!

I haven't used any super unnecessary sentences that I can find, and I've already had to really cut down what I've written about the experiences I've already got. If I cut any more, I'll fall into the "telling them what you've done not what you learnt" trap, which I'm keen to avoid.

Does anyone have any good techniques for bringing word/character counts down?

Thank you.


As per the above advice, but note you will probably run out of lines before you run out of characters.

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