1000 words on career goals (!!)

[user999]

This is one of the questions on the application:

Please give a brief statement of your educational and career goals. Your response is limited to 1000 characters.

This is *different* from the SOP question; (i.e there is another question with a 4000 word limit that says "SOP", includes achievements, activities, and areas of interest)

My problem is that my career goals are fairly simple: faculty position. With that in mind, I don't have 1000 words to fill up this question. Is it too irresponsilbe to paste the 200-300 word paragraph i have? On one hand, I don't want to ramble on about this nor do I want to stuff it by some childhood stories 'showing my interest.' in teaching...etc. On the other hand, it feels like I'd be dodging the question if I go with the short answer...

Also, some of the questions seem redundant. For example, there is another question that asks me to justify the research areas that I've picked (700 words), but then there's the SOP prompt that says "areas of interest" ! I guess it doesn't hurt to repeat myself?

Edited January 25, 2012 by user999

[Helpplease123]

1000 characters or 1000 words?

[Networc]

I'm putting my money on characters... which would mean that your 200-300 word paragraph would fit nicely; however, you might want to summarize even further so that the two paragraphs aren't exactly the same.

(If the space allocated for the 1000 characters is a field within the application, rather than a place to upload a document, then I think that they're looking for something very brief.)

Drum roll please....

[user999]

I'm putting my money on characters... which would mean that your 200-300 word paragraph would fit nicely; however, you might want to summarize even further so that the two paragraphs aren't exactly the same.

(If the space allocated for the 1000 characters is a field within the application, rather than a place to upload a document, then I think that they're looking for something very brief.)

Drum roll please....

Thanks for that, Networc.

Well, I kept writing after I started this thread and I think I just exceeded the limit! (it was characters, btw, and thanks to Helpplease123 for bringing that to my attention)

As a small advice to the forum readers, don't fill out an application at 1:00 AM on an exam night when it's not even the deadline. Odds are you'll miss important details like this one... I'm going to bed now!

Edited January 25, 2012 by user999