The short answer is 867 words.

 

How did we arrive at that number? See calculations below, courtesy of our friends at MIT. (They wanted to include numbers for standard deviation, etc., but we asked them to keep it simple.)

 

By using actual AMCAS personal statements for the calculations, we aimed to improve the accuracy of the results by having data with a representative quality and sophistication of writing.

 

In performing these calculations, we found some interesting nuggets of information. The average number of words per actual personal statement in our sample was 856, and the average number of characters per personal statement was 5223.

 

 

The Details

 

First, a caveat regarding these calculations: the sample data set is limited to 12 personal statements. The results of the calculations performed did not vary significantly, however, and thus we feel confident with these results. All references to the number of characters include spaces.

 

We reviewed several actual recent medical school personal statements, tabulated the number of words and the corresponding number of characters in each, and then divided the number of characters by the number of words, to determine the average word length, which came to 6.11 characters. We then divided 5300 characters by the average word length of 6.11 characters. So how many words is 5300 characters? The answer is 867 words.

 

The actual data is below: