Personal statement word limit
If you’ve been asked to write a personal statement, there’s a good chance you’ve also been given a word limit.
Personal statement word limits are not the enemy.
In fact they make life much easier, but telling you in no uncertain terms what the maximum length of your statement can be – Having this information at this stage is invaluable, as it will help you to effectively plan your statement in a way that won’t exceed the limit. Additionally, if you know that it’s going to be a bit of a squeeze to get everything in, you’ll make a concerted effort whilst writing your statement to avoid waffling, or using unnecessary words – This will make your subsequent editing job much less daunting.
More than this, though, you also know that every other applicant for your desired job/course has the same limit imposed on them – Lots of people struggle to write in a powerful, concise manner, so if you do a good job you’ll immediately jump ahead of a large portion of the competition.
I’ll talk later about what to do if you aren’t given a word limit for your personal statement, but for now just make sure that you aware of any limitations imposed on you (whether they relate to word limits, timescales or necessary content), and make a note of them – You don’t want your application to be rejected because you unwittingly ignored one of the requirements.