It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the forums. I’m am a board certified neurologist (I graduated med school in 2006 at age 35, residency in 2010 at 39). Now at 44, I’m heading back for fellowship in Hospice and Palliative Care. The ERAS application existed when I applied to residency but was different in some ways, though not as many as I expected. My question is about the personal statement. The ERAS Workbook states: “The personal statement is limited to 28,000 characters, which can include letters, number, spaces and punctuation marks.” Is that right? The average single-spaced type page is 3000 characters, meaning that 28,000 characters is over 9 pages! I’ll probably go a little over one page, but that’s it. I distinctly remember editing my personal statements for my internal medicine prelim year and neurology residency to make sure it was a single-page.
Any insight anyone has on the personal statement length would be much appreciated.
It should be a single page. My school has me writing mine single spaced and NO MORE than a page. Maybe they have that because they allow multiple PS? I know some people who just couldn’t decide and are applying to 2-3 different specialties so they have a different PS for each. They can also be tailored to specific programs, say you have a different section that you change to indicate a connection to location or whatever. Maybe that’s why they have those parameters posted.
Take home point: Still a page in length
Typo maybe? The Personal statement for AMCAS is something around 5900 characters. I can’t imagine that program directors want PS’s to be an order of magnitude longer than medical school admissions committees do.
I kept it to what I thought was a single page based on margins suggested over at SDN (I know, I hadn’t looked on there since I was a pre-med).
One interview invite so far. Very excited to be back in the game!
Congrats!! I just submitted, so I hope to hear something soon!