Check your PA personal statement with our CASPA character counter tool!
Personal statement guidelines and formatting
- CASPA personal statements must not exceed 5000 characters.
- Characters can include spaces, carriage returns, symbols, numbers and punctuation.
- Tabs, italics, multiple spaces and other styling are not allowed in the personal statement.
- To delineate paragraphs, type a double return.
Note: If you check your character count in Microsoft Word it might be a lot lower because Word does not count a carriage return (the enter key) as a character. Our counter does count carriage returns to better comply with CASPA.
Personal Statement FAQ
What is the CASPA personal statement word limit?
CASPA does not follow a word limit, it uses a character limit of 5000 characters. However, 5000 characters roughly translates to about 875 words. If you want to check the word count you can do so using the character counter on our home page.
How long should your PA personal statement be?
CASPA has a character limit of 5000 characters. Paste your statement into our counter tool above to check your length.
Is the CASPA personal statement character limit with or without spaces?
It includes spaces. Also, spaces can include carriage returns (the enter key). However, tabs are not allowed. Keep in mind, Microsoft Word's character count does not include carriage returns and will give you an inaccurate character count. Please use ours, as it will better comply with CASPA's formatting guidelines.
What is CASPA's personal statement prompt?
"Write a brief statement expressing why you are interested in being a Physician Assistant."
Resources if you get stuck
Go to The PA Platform for tips and assistance on writing your personal statement!
*This character counting tool is not affiliated with CASPA
*No personal statements are sent to the hosting server