Cutting down a personal statement to fit within a very limited word count is a tricky, but very useful skill to have, not only when applying for university but also when you get into writing job applications. So how can you say everything that you want to say and still meet a strict word count in your application? Today we’ll highlight a few tips for cutting down a personal statement.

When you first write your personal statement, it’s often best not to worry about your word count. This will give you a bit more freedom in getting your ideas down and will probably allow for better writing. There are limits to this of course, and cutting down a personal statement draft where you’ve written 5000 words to fit a 1000 word limit is probably going to be more trouble than just starting again. So write freely, but within reason, to start with.

When you do get your initial draft done and are ready to start cutting down a personal statement, it’s a great idea to turn on the “track changes” tool on your word processor. This will generally be found in the ‘review’ or similar tab – if you can’t find it, then Google it. This tool lets you make changes but without committing to them right away. You can make changes throughout the whole document before then going back and accepting or rejecting each individual change. This works really well to get an idea of how close you are to reaching your word count goal with each deletion. If you do make a change or a cut that you know you’re happy with right away, it might be a good idea to accept the change then and there, as the document does tend to get a bit cluttered up as you progress.

In order to cut down a personal statement, it’s often a good idea to rephrase little bits of the text. For example, through turning single nouns into plurals, you can often keep the same effect but omit an article, such as ‘the’. This obviously won’t work in every situation, so reread your sentence to make sure that it still make sense. This may not allow you to vastly cut down a personal statement, but every little word counts and this is an important step to take before you start cutting bits out.

At some point you will have to cut bits out, so consider how important each point is and how much you’ve written for each one. If you’re using the same number of words to talk about something that essential to the course you’re applying for as you are to talk about your hobbies, chances are there are some words that you can easily afford to cut out. Making small changes throughout the document will definitely get some results, but in the end you may just have to jettison a few points completely. Spend a bit of time doing something else, and then come back to the document ready to seriously cut down and meet that word count.