Statement of Purpose's length

[acornrawr]

Berkeley's SOP must be <12000 characters and the Personal History Statement must be <8000 characters. (for Material Science PhD) Does that mean I should write close to that much for each of them?

Would it be okay to submit something say 65% of the max length for the SOP and 25% of the max for the Personal History Statement?

Any response would be great! Thanks!

[eklavya]

It is better to get as close to the length as you can, without being redundant and losing focus. If you can state the same stuff in fewer words (not too succinct either), I don't see anything bad with that. However, it is always good to follow the given, specific directions and minimize the risk of being thrown away just because you did not follow the guidelines exactly.

Also, searching the forums gave me following hits... they might have more suggestions on this particular topic:

Edited December 5, 2010 by bhikhaari

[adaptations]

I don't think you should worry about the length too much on these statements - content is much more important than length. 12000 characters is also a very generous limit, and I'm fairly certain you can write a great SOP in half that many characters. Good luck.

[modernity]

Write the most you can, with the least amount of words....

They have to file through hundreds of these, and you will stand out if you could say more in less. Some professors just stop reading if your SOP gets boring, so make sure that you keep their attention.

[Bukharan]

I agree with Adaptations, they state the maximum amount of words/characters not the optimum one.

If you do not wish to write so much, it is your right! So don't worry!