Doing a word-count on a uni personal statement?

[Notapantodame]

We have 4000 characters or 47 lines whichever comes first. Does 4000 characters include spaces? I'm assuming not but I'm not sure.

Yes, spaces and punctuation all included.

It includes punctuation but not spaces, according to my 18 year old first year student son.
He says there are two ways of checking, characters with spaces and characters without.
It is 40,000 without spaces. You have written 4,000 but I’m sure that’s just a typo.

No, @Frenchmom, 4,000 is correct.

Op is talking (I assume) about the UCAS personal statement.

Yes. The UCAS personal statement allows 4,000 characters, which includes line spaces.

Here.