Under the personal statement word count?

itsemmarobyn

Do schools penalize you for being under the word count? The majority of the schools I'm applying to have the same general prompt so I'm tweaking the same personal statement for each school. Currently, I'm just below 5,000 characters (which is the limit for School A), but School B gives a limit of 6,000. Will it be a bad mark against me for not using the entire character/word allowance?

Mario Robo

I think if the personal statement is very good then more can sometimes be less. Meaning that sometimes its better to keep it shorter anyways, so if you go below the word count I don't think they will hold it against you unless you have ideas that are not fleshed out and you had the room to do it in.