university personal statement checker

UCAS Personal Statement Length Checker

Please note: The line count may differ than the number of lines in the textbox above but when copy and pasted will match the line count on the UCAS application.

UCAS Personal Statement Requirements

• No longer than 4000 characters.
• No longer than 47 lines.
• Each line can be no longer than 94 characters. (Our character counter above already has a max line length of 94 characters unless otherwise noted.)
• Characters include spaces, carriage returns, and punctuation.

To see additional features including word count, paragraph count, space count and more use the character counter on our home page.

How to write your UCAS personal statement

The UCAS personal statement scares most high school students. Writing a perfect personal statement is a strenuous and unavoidable process. With roughly about 6 million university applications each year, officials need a method for filtering stronger applicants from everyone else.

As challenging as this task may appear, it is also your only chance to share your personality and eligibility for the degree program you have chosen. Follow our practices given, and you can absolutely make your personal statement up to the mark.

Start with a plan

Each year thousands of applications are received for the best degrees in the world and are best focused on the goal of making their application stand out from the rest.

Thus, planning out what you want to say prior to writing your UCAS statement makes it easy to write a convincing personal statement. Start off by making a rough draft, answering some questions like

• What subjects do you want to study?
• Why have you particularly chosen this path for yourself?
• What makes you think that you are best suited to study this degree program at the college?

Some of these points will form the backbone of your personal statement, so write them in a manner that makes sense to you.

Sometimes you want to create simple bullet points or use mind maps. No matter what you decide; your goal is the same. You want to clarify why the university should provide you with a spot.

Bigger Picture of the Degree

Talk about the course that you have applied to. How did you learn about it in the first place? What means did you use to deepen your interest and knowledge in this area?

It would be a huge plus to list the books you read and the meetings you have attended regarding the subject.

Please elaborate on your academic attitude towards the degree. What are your goals after graduating? What role will it play in helping you achieve your greatest ambitions? What sort of vocation plans do you have after graduation?

Write about your work experience and achievements

Your previous achievements are an essential part of your personal statement. Think about all the accolades you have received and the contests you have participated in. These can be in-school, national or international. Both academic and sports awards can greatly help emphasize your commitment.

Write about the important skills and experiences acquired elsewhere (such as hobbies) that can be chained to the degree of your choice.

Remember, you are searching for experience that shows why you need to study the subject that you have chosen. You are not just writing an essay about what you are doing in your high school syllabus.

Extracurricular Activities

Your extracurriculars ought to likewise be included in the personal statement. Whether it be a MUN or a cross country race, they pass on the message that you love participating in different events.

Likewise, it is really smart to discuss any expertise you have acquired through extracurriculars.

Discuss any leadership roles you could have held, as they improve your capacity to appreciate people on a profound level and put you across as a pioneer.

Community service is a plus in the UCAS statement as it shows a promise to a reason bigger than oneself.

You can link all these activities to your selected course in the best case. Be careful not to elaborate too much on extracurricular activities.

UCAS Character Count

There are some specific instructions for your personal statement that you can never ignore.

First, it must not exceed 4,000 characters or 47 lines of text (including blank lines), whichever comes first. If you do exceed this, the university will not get your entire statement.

So make sure your personal statement has a solid and decisive ending. It will look bad if you cut it off in the middle of a sentence after realizing that you have exceeded the text limit.

Instead, give each section proper attention, time, and character to plan your essay thoroughly.

However, while you are getting everything rolling, you ought to overlook these restrictions.

Tips for reducing the character count

From the get-go, you simply need to jot down all that you feel is significant. You will probably wind up with something very lengthy, but that is okay.

This is where you get to do some polishing and trimming. Maintain the focal point of your piece on the course you are applying for, why you want to do it and for what reason you are impeccably fit for it.

Glance through what you have composed until now - do you have the right balance? Cut off whatever continues a little to far, as you want to keep each point crisp and concise.

It is a difficult process to try to keep as much content as possible while keeping the character count low, so here are some simple ways to make it easier for you.

Avoid quotes

Read your personal statement and eliminate platitudes if there are any - for instance, 'I've wanted to study psychology since I was young'…The same goes for the quotations: except if they increase the value of your statement (which they don't most of the time!), it is really the best practice to remove them.

Make sure everything is concise

For each sentence in your piece, use the "so what?" rule. Does this sentence appear to be more reasonable for the course? If not, cutting it is best. This frequently happens when individuals write too much about their extracurriculars in a frantic endeavour to fit everything in. For extra analysis, feel free to use our sentence counter to calculate the average length of your sentences.

Colleges, notwithstanding, need to see a reflection and what you have extracted from your encounters; this implies it is normally better to simply discuss a few extracurriculars than to list many things that the reader is likely to skim.

Also, note that you don't have to use hospital or volunteer location names. This further allows you to remove the last few characters from the count.

Use colour coding

An easy way to see where you are losing most of your characters is to highlight the sections of your statement with different colours.

Check your language

We frequently invest a great deal of energy looking up big words with the expectation that it will make our work impressive. However, this isn't generally the best practice. It is, in many cases, best to cut these words for fundamental and engaging sentences.

I hope the process will now be transparent, and it will be more exciting for you as you embark on your writing.

How to use our UCAS personal statement checker

To use our tool simply copy and paste your personal statement into the text-box above.

At the top, you will see two metrics displayed. The first metric on the left is the total characters you've typed out of the limit of 4,000 characters.

The second metric on the right is the number of lines your text contains out of the max of 47 lines. The UCAS allows a maximum of 94 characters per line, which our line count feature already takes into consideration.

To make it easier you can click the green "copy text" button to copy the text in the text box. You can also click the red "clear text" button to delete all the text in the text-box.

Why use an online UCAS personal statement checker?

Reason number one: The character count feature in Microsoft Word will not give you an accurate reading. The reason is that Word does not count the carriage return (also known as the enter key) as a character while UCAS does count it as a character.

The problem is that this will cause Word to underestimate the character count. This could cause your essay not to be able to submit when you try to upload it. If anything it would be better to overestimate the word count on Word that way it will fit.

Our personal statement checker however will give you the same character count as UCAS unlike the Microsoft Word character count.

It can be helpful to see the character count in real-time as you are typing your personal statement. This way you are constantly reminded of how long your essay is.

If you are not paying attention it can be easy to lose track of how long your essay is and go over the limit.

Our tool makes it easier to be aware of the length and easy to cut back if necessary.

How many characters in a personal statement?

UCAS requires 4,000 characters in their personal statement. Use our personal statement checker above to see if your essay meets the requirements.

How many words in a UCAS personal statement

UCAS has a character limit of 4,000 characters. This equates to about 615 to 800 words.

How many words is 4000 characters?

4,000 characters is about 615 to 800 words. For more Characters to Words conversions, check out our Characters To Words Converter .

Does the personal statement character limit include spaces?

Yes, it does include spaces as well as carriage returns. Check your statement with our personal statement checker above.

Thanks for using our UCAS personal statement checker!

We appreciate you taking the time to check your personal statement using our webpage. As you know, this is a very important college application essay to get into British universities. UCAS stands for Universities and Colleges Admissions Service and is what the UK uses for the college application process. Good luck on your personal statement!

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Personal statement builder

Welcome to The Student Room's personal statement builder tool . We've put this tool together because we know it's not easy working on a Ucas personal statement. Since you're on this page, you probably know that too. 

This tool is designed to make things a bit simpler. We'll break down the task into manageable chunks, guiding you through each stage of your personal statement.

We'll even check it at the end for common mistakes. This tool is free for all members of The Student Room. Get started here .

What is a Ucas personal statement?

Your personal statement is a document that forms part of your university application. It's basically the one part of your application where you get to talk directly to the universities' admissions staff. You can explain why you're applying for your chosen course and why you are suitable for studying it. 

You'll want to include mainly academic information; referencing relevant books, writers and podcasts, for instance; writing about relevant work experience; and perhaps including a small paragraph about relevant extra-curricular activities. You can write up to 47 lines or 4,000 characters, whichever you hit first.

What is a Ucas personal statement NOT?

When you're staring at that big blank screen, it can be easy to veer off on a tangent. Here are a few things your personal statement should not be:

• It's not a letter to the admissions staff. No need for 'Dear Sir/Madam' or 'Yours faithfully' here. You'll also want to avoid addressing the reader directly. You're probably going to have several different universities reading your personal statement, so saying something like "I really like your university" is just going to come across insincere.  
• It's not an autobiography. You want to be writing about your academic interests and your reasons for wanting to continue your education in this area. You don't need to tell your life story or cover every one of your achievements and experiences.  
• It's not an academic essay. Try not to get wrapped up in an analysis of textbooks you've read. The 'personal' part of this statement comes from why these things have interested you.  
• It's not a job application. Keep the focus on why you want to study the course, not the career that you hope to start several years from now.   
• It's not a school report. There's no need to talk about exam grades here - these are listed elsewhere in your application. Skip any issues which have affected your results. If information like this is relevant, it should be included in your reference rather than in the personal statement.

Why is a personal statement important?

Think of it as an opportunity to make a great first impression. Your personal statement introduces you to the admissions staff who will hopefully be offering you a place on their course.

Here you get your chance to stand out from the other applicants, to explain why you want to study the course you've chosen and why you're a good fit for it. This might be particularly helpful if you're applying for a competitive course.

For any course, your personal statement will be looked at if you miss your offer and it could help a university accept you even though you didn't get the grades. 

If an interview forms part of the selection process for your course, then your personal statement will probably be used to shape some of the questions you're asked. With that in mind, make sure you know the content of your statement.

What members of The Student Room say about our personal statement builder

The tool will help you avoid the common pitfalls to ensure you deliver a truly personal statement. Ethereal

This tool supports applicants through the daunting process of writing their personal statement in an easily accessible way.

The tool gives lots of structure and prompting for people who don't know where to start.

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What to include in a Personal Statement

Personal Statement Tips

Nail your uni application with our personal statement examples.

Discover personal statements by subject, from A to Z. Find inspiration for your own application with these successful personal statement examples from real students.

A-Z of Personal Statements

Learn from previous student personal statements here. We have collated over 700 personal statement examples to help you on your university journey and to help you with how to write a personal statement.

These personal statement examples will show you the kind of thing that universities are looking for from their applicants. See how to structure your personal statement, what kind of format your personal statement should be in, what to write in a personal statement and the key areas to touch on in your statement.

A personal statement is a chance to tell your university all about you - a good personal statement is one that showcases your passion for the subject, what inspired you to apply for the course you’re applying for and why you think you would be an asset to the university.

Our collection includes personal statement examples in Mathematics, Anthropology, Accounting, Computer Science, Zoology and more.

Writing a personal statement has never been easier with our vast collection of personal statement examples.

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Personal Statement Help

What is a personal statement.

A personal statement is an essay written by a student applying to either a college or university. A personal statement is written and then uploaded to UCAS and is then attached to any university applications that the student may then make.

If you need more information check out our personal statement advice articles .

How to write a personal statement

There isn't a clearly defined personal statement template for you to use as each person's statement is different.

When it comes to writing a personal statement for universities, your personal statement should touch on your passions, your interest in the course, why you're applying for the course and why you would be an asset to the university you're applying to.

Talk about the clubs and societies that you belong to, any work experience you may have and any awards you might have won.

If you're still looking for information check out our article on how to write a personal statement .

How to start a personal statement

When it comes to starting your personal statement, the best thing to do is to be succinct and to have enough tantalising information to keep the reader informed and eager for more.

Your introduction should touch on your personal qualities and why you are applying for the subject you're applying for. Keeping things short and sweet means that it also allows you to break your personal statement up, which makes it easier for the reader.

We have plenty of advice for students that are wondering about what to include in a personal statement .

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UCAS personal statement checklist

Unless you’re applying for a course that interviews, your personal statement is the only opportunity you have to demonstrate your personality through your application. Once you’ve written your statement, why not use our checklist below to make sure you have got all the vital elements covered.

The personal statement on your UCAS application is your chance to really sell yourself to the universities you are applying to. We do read them and it can make the difference between receiving an offer and being unsuccessful.  Once you’ve got your ideas for your personal statement ready to go, use our handy checklist below to make sure you’ve covered all the important information.

• Have you said in the first two sentences what you would like to study? Remember, be innovative in the way you tell us.
• Have you proofread it? Get everyone involved: friends, family, teachers – anyone that’ll look at it. Try reading it aloud too – doing this will make it very clear if something isn’t quite right.
• Have you used full sentences, paragraphs and proper grammar? It is a formal document so should read like one.
• Have you double-checked your spelling and grammar? The UCAS application form doesn’t have a spellcheck function, so we recommend copying it into a word processor to use theirs (it will also give you the character count – remember you’ve only got 4000 – and that includes spaces!).
• Have you got the balance right? We recommend that your statement should focus 80% on the course, and why you want to study it, and 20% on you and your skills. Other universities might have different ideas on this though.
• Have you talked about why the course you are applying for is interesting to you – you need to convince Admissions Teams that you want to study this subject for at least the next 3 years.
• Have you told us how have you come to this decision on the course you are applying for? Have you shared your experiences – something unique to you?
• Have you provided evidence to any claims you make and told us how, as a result, you are more suitable to the course?
• Have you offered an opinion or discussed a contemporary issue around your subject? The best personal statements show what you’ve learned independently and how it’s informed your opinion.

Your Transferable Skills:

• Have you shown what makes you ideal for the course?
• Are the skills you’ve mentioned relevant to the course? Ask yourself the question ‘so what?’ If you can’t think about a reason to talk about a particular skill, the reader will wonder why you’ve mentioned it at all.

You can use the ABC test to see if you are making it relevant:

• A = Activity: This might be captaining a sports team, or being part of a drama club
• B = Benefit: This is the skill(s) you have gained from doing the activity
• C = Course: How the skill will help you to complete the course successfully

And finally, remember that this is a personal statement. It should be totally unique and all about you. Our final tip is this: If you were to anonymously give your personal statement to someone in your class, could they identify it as yours? If they couldn’t, we need to see more about you in there.

Read our tips for writing a UCAS personal statement

For more advice, see the UCAS tips for writing a personal statement

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• how to apply for undergraduate courses
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A guide to using AI and ChatGPT with your personal statement

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• How to start a personal statement: The attention grabber
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• Introducing the personal statement tool
• Personal statement dos and don'ts
• What to include in a personal statement
• Using AI and ChatGPT to help you with your personal statement
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What's on this page?

What is ai and chatgpt.

• Is using AI to help with my personal statement 'cheating'?

Tips for using AI and ChatGPT with your personal statement

Try our personal statement builder.

AI, or Artificial Intelligence, refers to computer systems or machines that can perform tasks that have typically required human thought. Effectively this means they simulate human intelligence.

This has led to the development of online tools like ChatGPT that can answer questions by using a vast databases of information and generate human-like text on almost any topic.

Why is everyone talking about it?

You might have seen a lot about ChatGPT online and in the news because it is a game-changer in terms of how we can generate ideas, written text and offer solutions to problems or tasks we have to carry out.

It was only launched in November 2022 and has currently been used by over 1 billion people (as of May 2023). There has also been a lot of discussion within schools, universities and colleges about how students are using it to help with their work and assessments .

Is using AI to help with my personal statement 'cheating'?

As you can imagine, we have had a lot of questions from people applying for university or college about whether using tools like ChatGPT to help with your UCAS personal statement is considered 'cheating'.

Generating (and then copying, pasting and submitting) all or a large part of your personal statement from an AI tool such as ChatGPT, and presenting it as your own words,  could be considered cheating by universities and colleges and could affect your chances of an offer.

When you complete your application, you now have to declare that your personal statement hasn't been copied or provided from another source, including artificial intelligence software.

As part of our responsibility to applicants and universities and colleges, the UCAS Verification Team run checks to detect fraudulent applications and patterns of similarity in personal statements. Read our guide to fraud and verification and similarity .

If UCAS anti-plagiarism software detects elements of a personal statement that are similar to others, the universities or colleges it is intended for may be notified.

The personal statement is exactly that; personal. It should describe your ambitions, skills and the experiences that make you suitable for the course you're applying for in your own words. A lot of students we speak to say the process of writing it helps confirm that they're applying for the right course.

If your personal statement doesn't appear genuine, it could affect your chances of being offered a place. AI is good but it can't replicate your personal thoughts and feelings and convey your own skills and experiences. A bland AI-generated personal statement is not what universities and colleges are looking for.

However, universities and colleges do understand that AI tools can be useful to applicants writing personal statements if used in the correct way. We have outlined some useful tips on using such tools below.

The university and college view

We have spoken to schools, universities, colleges and careers advisers, and pretty much everyone agrees that using tools like ChatGPT can be helpful to applicants writing their personal statement if the right guidance is followed.

They realise that AI tools are already reshaping the way we work and research and are about to become integral to studying and the way we work in many careers, particularly creative fields.

Although using AI and ChatGPT to write your personal statement for you will be considered cheating, there are ways you could use AI to help you make a start, structure and then check your final work.

It's important to remember that while ChatGPT can generate text, it's not a substitute for your own thoughts and experiences. It's called a personal statement for a reason and universities want to hear from you, not an AI bot.

You could use ChatGPT as a tool to help inspire, clarify and articulate your own ideas, rather than asking it to write your entire personal statement for you.

Here are a few ways you could use AI to assist you:

Brainstorm some ideas

You could use ChatGPT to give you ideas about topics that are relevant to your chosen subject, which you can then relate to your own experiences and opinions. Or you could ask it to list skills that are relevant to the course you're applying for, allowing you to think about your own talents and how to convey them.

Help with structure

You may want to ask ChatGPT to suggest ways of structuring your personal statement. Our personal statement builder does something very similar.

Use it for checking readability

ChatGPT can be used to check your personal statement draft for readability. It may suggest ways to rephrase sentences to make them more concise, while maintaining their meaning.

Dos and don'ts

Check everything that AI tools suggest, particularly facts.

They do get things wrong!

Copy and paste from AI tools and use as final text.

AI can state facts but cannot reflect your own skills, experiences and thoughts in your voice, which is what universities are looking for!

• My interest in law began when I read 'Who was Ruth Bader Ginsburg?', a book about the US Supreme Court Justice whose arguments helped persuade governments to change policies on gender equality. The book made me aware of how the law can make a huge different to individuals around the world.
• During my work experience placement, shadowing a solicitor, I attended the local Magistrates Court and saw how the process of cross examining witnesses works which was fascinating and something I feel my skills could be suited to.
• From a young age, I have been fascinated by the intricate workings of the legal system and its impact on society. This passion for justice and the desire to make a positive difference in people's lives has driven me to pursue a career in law.
• Beyond academia, I have engaged in extracurricular activities that have further enhanced my skills and enriched my understanding of law.

Ideas but not personal detail

While ChatGPT may suggest ideas of what to write about in your personal statement, the very specific reference to the book in the good example above gives a personal flavour to why the applicant wants to study law which an AI tool could not.

And while ChatGPT might suggest talking about work placements in your personal statement, you have to give specific examples that are personal to you and talk about what you experienced and got out of them.

The tone also feels genuine and heartfelt and not bland and overly formal as can happen with AI-generated responses.

Beware the bland and generic!

In contrast, the bad examples above have been completely generated by ChatGPT.

They feel very academic and bland. They don't give any real sense of what personally motivates the person to study law other than general statements about wanting "justice" and "making a difference". 

And finally, while suggesting the person has taken part in activities outside of school, there are no details of how these have enhanced their understanding of and passion for law.

The personal statement builder in the UCAS Hub is designed to help you think about what to include in your personal statement, and how to lay it all out. It also counts how many characters you’ve used, so it’s easy to see when you’re close to the 4,000 character limit.

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By Nik Taylor (Editor, The Uni Guide) | 21 September 2023 | 3 min read

How to avoid plagiarism when writing your personal statement

Take care with your personal statement and you'll have no worries about accidental plagiarism

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Ucas has a system in place to check for personal statement plagiarism. The first stage of this is computerised. Every personal statement is checked for similarity against every other personal statement previously received by Ucas (as well as personal statements that have been published online). If the system finds a statement is more than 30% similar to another, it flags it for further investigation by the Ucas Verification Team. That team then runs another check on the statement. If they agree about the level of similarity, they send an email to the applicant and to all the universities on that person's application. Those universities may take further action - it's up to them at that point.  Clearly, having a personal statement flagged in this way is something you very much want to avoid. But so long as you're submitting your own work (and you've not shared your statement online) it's not something you'll need to worry about. Just to be double-sure, here are some common questions (and answers) about personal statement plagiarism. Visit the  personal statement forum  and the  university applications forum  on The Student Room to see what other students are saying about their experiences of the process. 

I posted my personal statement online – could this cause me a problem?

The Ucas similarity checker includes personal statements that it has found on the internet. So, if your statement's published online - perhaps in a blog or on a messageboard - then it could be flagged as plagiarised. That's not your only headache in this scenario. Other people might also copy parts of your personal statement, pinching your hard work for their own application. If you've posted yours online, you're probably going to have to start over from scratch. The advice here is simple: if your university application is still underway, don't post your personal statement where it can be found online.

• Read more: teacher secrets for writing a great personal statement

I Googled one of my sentences and it came up as similar to another personal statement, but I haven't copied anything!

Relax. It’s pretty much inevitable that there will be some overlap or similarities in phrasing with other personal statements. It’s nearly impossible to be completely original when there are thousands of applicants all writing about the same thing. So long as the ideas are yours and you haven't copied someone else, you'll be fine.  However if your personal statement’s opening line is something like: “Ever since I was little I’ve wanted to be a…” then you should consider using something more original. Avoid clichés at all costs, not because of plagiarism checkers, but because it will help your application.

• Read more: the ten biggest mistakes when writing your personal statement

I sent my Ucas application and the deadline is closed, is it safe to post my personal statement online now?

Not yet! Wait until you’ve received your offers and got a university place before you post your personal statement anywhere. That way you’ll be well out of the danger zone.  Personal statements won't be checked immediately so you want to avoid the stress of being flagged. 

• Read more: how to write an excellent personal statement in 10 steps

I used a plagiarism checker, will it be flagged by Ucas now?

No, plagiarism checkers are private and don’t keep a copy of your work (that would be very cruel if they did!).

I emailed my personal statement to my parent/teacher/friend to proofread, am I in trouble?

No. Emails are private so emailing your personal statement or sending via private message won’t be a problem.  However, don’t send your personal statement to random people you don’t know (even if they say they’re helping you out), or to anyone that might want to use it for their own application. If they copy parts of your statement in their own then you could both get in trouble. Remember you can’t control what other people do with your personal statement, so be careful about who you send it to.

You may want to look at these...

How to write an excellent personal statement in 10 steps.

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