The short answer is 737 words.

 

How did we arrive at that number? See the calculations page for all the details, but in brief, we calculated the average word length for relevant personal statements, which came to 6.11 characters. We then divided 4500 characters by the average word length of 6.11 characters. So, how many words are 4500 characters? We calculated the number to be 737 words.

 

All references to the number of characters include spaces.

 

Personal statements for medical school were used to perform these calculations, but since the quality and sophistication of writing these statements are on par with the ADEA personal statements for dental school, we felt the resulting numbers apply equally well to both.

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The highest characters-per-word value we saw was 6.63, and the lowest was 5.80, which means that if your vocabulary is especially strong, 4500 characters will result in only 679 words, whereas if your vocabulary is on the weaker side, you will have 776 words.