AMCAS Character Counter
Paste each entry below and get a live count against the real AMCAS limits, plus a check for the smart quotes and dashes that count differently once they hit AMCAS's plain-text fields.
Work & Activities description
700 characters, including spacesMost Meaningful explanation
1,325 characters, including spacesPersonal Comments essay
5,300 characters, including spacesWhy the count sometimes looks different in AMCAS
If you draft in Word or Google Docs, "smart" typographic characters - curly quotation marks like “this” instead of "this", em dashes (—), en dashes (–), and ellipses (…) - get auto-formatted in. AMCAS's activity and essay fields are plain text, and those characters don't always survive the trip cleanly: some applicants see them display as garbled symbols after submission, and some report the character counter treating them as more than one character. The safest fix is to retype them as straight quotes (") and plain hyphens (-), or use the Clean smart quotes & dashes button above to do it automatically.
Related reading: How to write AMCAS activity descriptions and how to choose and write Most Meaningful experiences.