Berkeley SOP length

[D. Malorkus]

Am I suffering from wishful blindness or has Berkeley quietly relaxed the word/page limit for its SOP?

My spreadsheet says "~500 w. or 2 pp." for the SOP and the Personal History Statement, and I must have gotten that from somewhere, but when I went to double check earlier, I couldn't find a length requirement listed anywhere. I've checked on the SOP and PHS sections of the online app., the admission and prospective student information pages on the department's website and the department and grad school's admissions FAQs. I feel like it must be right in front of me or that it's somewhere I'm not looking, and I'm not seeing it or remembering where it is because I don't want to have to squeeze another 200 words out of my SOP. On the other hand, I really don't want to squeeze another 200 words out of my SOP.

[justkeepswimming]

According to this webpage (http://grad.berkeley.edu/admissions/state_purpose.shtml), it should be 500-600 words. Mine is about 900 right now and it's due in 2 days ...

[theregalrenegade]

Under the history dept guidelines, all it gives is a 1000 word maximum for the SOP.

[D. Malorkus]

Thwarted by Carla Trujillo, Ph.D.!

Though: the hopes-dashing Dr. Trujillo does also say "1 to 1 ½ pages." With judicious character spacing, a page and a half single-spaced can easily fit a thousand words.

Edited December 3, 2012 by D. Malorkus