Does it matter if it's dense?

[Guest]

Hi there,
I am quite happy with my personal statement at the moment in terms of content, but the problem is that to fit it into Ucas I would have cut out the spaces between lines - it is in paragraphs but it looks pretty dense as Ucas won't even let you indent each paragraph.

My tutor thinks it'll be OK and that the content is the most important, so I should delete spaces rather than words, but I'm really worried that it'll disadvantage my application as maybe admissions tutors won't bother reading it. I would hate to waste my application as I have good predicted grades and I think the content of my statement is good...

I would appreciate you help on this please...

Thanks in advance!

[carmelmarie]

i think that the content is deffinitely the most important thing. it is the admissions tutors job to ensure they give everyone a fair hearing and if your personal statement is good and gripping they will read it. however, atthe same time, it can be good ot have some space. however, tehn youd have to put space between every paragraph and you may not be able to delete that many lines. have you tried rewording sentences? for example, in mine i had 'I have varied paid and voluntary work expereince which has developed my responsiblities...etc' which i changed to 'my varied paid and voluntary work experience has developed...'losing several characters. i know it's not a lot but its surprising how much difference in terms of lines this can be especially if youre just a word or two over

experiement in apply itself. paste it in, then delete two or three words off every paragraph (randomly, any words, save the original obviously) and see how many lines u save. it could be by deleting just one word on each paragraph u save enough. and im sure you could find one word to cut out or a shorter one that would be ok.

try it and see - but dont worry if you cant as i said before, its the admissions tutors job to read personal statements,and if your tutor says its fine - well im sure they have lots of expereince and know best. so many others will be in your situation too. dont worry.

[Guest]

Thanks for the advice - I've fiddled with my statement since I last posted, and I have now got appropriate spaces, but I don't feel like I've lost anything from the content (I hope...) - yeah that's what I thought, it's admissions tutors' job to do it, but I'm quite happy with it now anyway...I know what you mean about rephrasing sentences, I'm used to that from English essays and things, I am never concise in a first draft at all!

[Guest]

It doesn't matter. UCAs reorganises it anyway