<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I'm working on my personal statements now, and I want to ask a question about the word length. I know the maximum is 1,000 words, but I wanted to know if it's acceptable to admissions officers if the word length of the two responses is 800~900. Is it? I'm not sure I can go all the way to 950~1,000. How long are you guys making yours?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>mine is exactly 1,000 words; I’m not wasting any space.</p>
<p>I plan on editing down to 1,000 words as well. I actually wish the word limit was higher…
As for you, so long as you think you answered every component of both prompts, you should be good.</p>
<p>I’m sure that admissions officers would prefer a student who is concise yet capable of depth over a student who only knows how to produce fluff with a main thesis that isn’t well-developed.</p>
<p>mine is exactly 1K words</p>
<p>394 words for the first, 603 for the 2nd. 997 total.</p>
<p>999 words here.</p>
<p>If your essays are most effective how they are now, don’t add fluff to them. Most people tend to go up to the word limit because they have a lot to say, but if you’ve articulated and explained everything that you need to, you’re fine.</p>
<p>It’s completely acceptable to have around 800-900 and you can even have less than that. Mines around 980.
On an interesting note, I asked one of my teachers if it was alright that I write around 300 words for one prompt and 900 for the other because I didn’t have much to say for the first prompt, and she said that they would notice(not in a favorable way). I ended up writing 500 for both.</p>
<p>I have never heard an admissions officer say nor have I ever seen on any UC website that a longer response to one prompt is viewed unfavorably.</p>
<p>My original draft for Prompt 1 was 900 words; in the end, I trimmed it down to 550. I probably could have added an extra paragraph but, to be honest, I do not think it would have made much of a difference. </p>
<p>With the UC prompts they are basically asking for a 3-deminionsal view. 1st is do you actually care about your major / have done you stuff involving your major or did you pick it at random. 2nd is beyond your major, tell us something you have done that is important to who you are as a person. 3rd is grades / explain your grades if need be.</p>
<p>After the 500 or so mark with prompt 1, it it made little sense to keep talking about it. The major points were already made. So it was better to allocate those words into prompt 2; that way I wouldn’t risk instead sounding like a one-trick pony. That is probably why a 30/70 split in words would not be favorable.</p>
<p>On a side-note. Unless you have an amazing prompt 2. Prompt 1 is most likely more important for transfer students.</p>
<p>One last-thing I forgot. Make sure you guys are writing about recent events. You shouldn’t talk about anything from HS or prior unless it is somehow related to what you have done afterwords.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses, everyone. I really appreciate it!</p>
<p>And yeah, bomerr, I plan to talk about how my interest in my major(philosophy) developed last year for the first prompt. I basically came to a philosophy class with my friend once and the discussions in it were amazing, even if some philosophy 101 students can be annoying, lol.</p>
<p>I don’t quite know what to put for the second prompt, but it won’t be a big issue for me. I intend to make the length of that response about 300~400 words. The first prompt response will get most of the words.</p>