Paragraphs on Personal Statement

[Happy546]

Hi, sorry I realise this has no doubt been discussed a thousand times but struggling to work out best way forward. DD's PS is over line limit in UCAS preview if she has spaces between the paragraphs and she doesn't want to take any more info out. Not ideal. With the lines removed most paragraphs are still obvious because the previous line finishes half way along, but I've read elsewhere that UCAS removes superfluous spaces so maybe the new paragraph just gets added to the previous one, which would be a disaster.

What have your DC done? I know the lines between would be best, and obviously she doesn't want to piss off the admissions tutors but...

Thanks

Shorten the statement.

Get someone to look it over at school and suggest how she could be more concise perhaps?

We always tell ourselves not to out lines between the paragraphs. UCAS does not bunch up the spaces at the end of the line so it is still obvious where the paragraphs are. Admissions are well used to reading statements in this format and it is better to not lose content if relevant.

DD had the exact same issue. To have paragraph breaks she would have to lose 6 lines of text which she cannot do. It is a limitation within UCAS and I am sure the admissions teams have experienced these formatting issues many time previously.

Last year my DS didn't leave lines between paragraphs and he still got all the interviews and offers so admission staff are definitely prepared for this format.

If you shorten the statement to allow for paragraph lines that may very well mean that the statement would fall very short of the 4000 characters. I would say that this is less ideal than having no paragraph lines.

4000 characters is a maximum, not the precise required number. There is a difference between editing something to express oneself more concisely and cutting content that one feels it is essential to include.

@MarchingFrogs i know that. DD read somewhere that the ideal length should be between 3500 and 4000 characters. If she were to remove 6 lines of text at 94 characters per line she’d be getting rid of 564 characters, which is rather a lot and would bring to below 3500.

its better to be more concise and have paragraphs than cramming in that extra clarinet grade and having a big block of text.

Thanks all for your feedback. Mixed opinions it seems! Only one line about non academics so really not sure the trade off is worth it if she removes more. Looked at it in preview and it does appear that at least you can see gap at end of paragraph as long as the line doesn’t finish at the end.

@Happy546 Ds did some tweaking after it said he had too many lines but it hadn't, it was just how UCAS formatted it, it put words onto the next line even though there was room to put it on the previous line so we formatted it within that UCAS box. Ds doesn't have any blank lines but it naturally has breaks where the paragraphs are in you see what I mean. But he deliberately reworded it so it wasn't a wall of text to allow for that eye break. His is 3995 characters and 46 or 47 lines long. It was handed in 2 weeks ago so I can't remember the line count.

My advice is reword it, at this point Ds was culling but not any substance just reworking sentences to say the same thing with less characters or better wording.

That was sixth form's deadline for all early entry although I feel like it has lasted forever as they had to hand in their outline first draft in July!

Statements without line breaks are very hard to read and look like a wall of text, when it presented to universities. Admission tutors will only spend a couple of minutes reading the PS, and may have quite a few to go through. So best no to make it too difficult for them. 4000 characters is the hard limit not something to aim for. Line breaks between paragraphs also makes it much easier to highlight the more pertinent information.

My daughter kept the para breaks in. It was not obvious where the breaks were without the lines, as she filled up every possible space - remember it's 47 lines OR 4000 max limit, whichever comes first, so everyone must remember to put it in the ucas form to make sure the format doesn't change the length! I think in the end it was 3850 characters, and every one had to earn its place!
I'm sure it won't make a material difference not having them in, but just thinking of the people reading PS after PS, having the breaks in does look better.

We didn’t leave extra lines. If we had known about the word count at the start, probably would have written 3 rather than 5 paragraphs. Short final sentences limits the blockiness a bit and it will will have to do.

On the bright side - this is probably the last year to deal with this problem given the personal statement changes.

Seriously having worked in a school with a high number of Oxbridge offers and medicine offers every year it is perfectly normal to not have the line breaks between the paragraphs. Often these students have already expressed themselves concisely within the 4000 characters with no line breaks, it is just that they have plenty of relevant content.

Those advocating for line breaks I suspect possibly have not overseen as many personal statement submissions and offers resulting from such applications as I have.