Personal Statement residency

[iridocyclitiss]

Hi everyone,
Congrats to everyone who just matched! I am currently doing externships and had a question about personal statements for residency. What is the typical length of a personal statement? Should the personal statement exclude things on your CV and just share things about you? Thanks in advance for any help.

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[Weirdy]

Advice that got me through every personal statement from prepod to now:
- Your personal statement should tell me what makes you you
- If its already on your CV/resume, I don't want to read about it

Each person reading will judge differently.
I hate the flowerly "here are all my accomplishments and leadership positions disguised as hardships" b*llsh**. Just screams fake.

To the point. Personal. Not full of b***s****.

Mileage varies.

 

[iridocyclitiss]

Advice that got me through every personal statement from prepod to now:
- Your personal statement should tell me what makes you you
- If its already on your CV/resume, I don't want to read about it

Each person reading will judge differently.
I hate the flowerly "here are all my accomplishments and leadership positions disguised as hardships" b*llsh**. Just screams fake.

To the point. Personal. Not full of b***s****.

Mileage varies.

Wholeheartedly agree, thank you!!

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Looking at mine, it seems the character limit was 4000 including spaces. That gave me 1.25 pages of single spaced text 12pt font in Microsoft Word. It is submitted through the portal in a text box so they won't necessarily see it formatted as under or above one page length, but probably for the sake of being concise, try to keep it towards the 1 page length.

 

[Podstar]

I agree with Weirdy. After reviewing applications and interviews this year the personal statements that just restated their CV I stopped reading a quarter way through. The personal statements that were interesting or gave insight into who the person was I read all the way through.