The admissions website says that they use “comprehensive process - contributing factors include academic record, standardized test scores, accomplishments outside of the classroom, recommendations and essays.”
Essays is ranked last. How much are chances of acceptance decreased by if there are a few punctuation errors and awkward phrasing in the “Why NYU” essay, considering academics are average but extracurriculars are above average?
This is for ED1.
this isn’t necessarily specific to NYU but an admissions officer told me that as much as applicants like to think that admissions people are all very stickler and are always looking for wrong punctuation, spelling errors, etc, they really don’t care that much about a misplaced comma or an awkwardly phrased sentence. an accidental grammar mistake doesn’t make you a bad applicant. it makes you a human being who accidentally made a grammar mistake. don’t sweat it!