If you’re deep into the task of writing your personal statement for your UCAS application, you may be having a hard time figuring out how to fit everything you do into so few characters. There are a few tips to cut down and help you get all your information in. This is a good skill to learn now in editing your personal statement, as you’ll have to make your coursework fit within strict word counts once you’re admitted to university.

To start with, don’t worry too much about the personal statement character count to begin with. Try to keep things concise, but write down what you want to say. You can edit as you go along too – sometimes you’ll realise a few sentences later that you’re just repeating what you’ve already written. It’s easier to avoid doing this if you’ve made a quick outline of the points that you want to include in your personal statement or coursework first. This will keep you on track, help you avoid repetition and help you decide on what the most important points to include are. It’s unlikely that you’ll get to say everything you initially think of.

Once you’ve got a draft of your personal statement, have a read over it. Consider whether there are any phrases that seem particularly wordy, and whether there’s a more succinct way to say it. Often playing around with some adjectives can allow you to cut out an entire sentence and still retain the meaning! Consider which points are the most important to emphasise in the personal statement. For example, highlighting your knowledge of concepts that are core to the curriculum and that you came across these through your own research or shadowing someone in the industry will require more of an explanation than that you have excellent typing skills acquired through hours upon hours of updating your Facebook. In this case (and if it’s important for your application), it’s enough to say that you’ve got excellent typing skills.

Get someone else to read over your personal statement, like a teacher or parent. Often times you’ll be looking at it for so long that you won’t be able to see what can be lost. Getting an outside perspective can help give some perspective to this, and may also provide suggestions as to how to explain things in a more direct way.

Don’t be afraid to completely rewrite entire sentences in the personal statement, or the whole thing if you have some spare time. Often times, getting the first draft down is the hardest part, but once you know what ideas you want to express you can do so in a much more succinct manner without even thinking too much about it.

So don’t worry if you’re going over the character count. The best way to get a good statement within limits is to write a lot and then cut, cut, cut!