<p>The project was due the day before Winter break began. If it was done by then, we were to take a ten percent penalty and complete it next term.</p>
<p>did you catch it the first time you read it? oh mannnnn those are basically the first 2 sentences of my common app essay. how bad is that-seriously? </p>
<p>i guess thats the kind of mistake you get from reworking the words over and over.... boo</p>
<p>don’t worry about it. if the rest of the essay is mistake free, they’ll give you a pass.</p>
<p>thanks. i like you. lol</p>
<p>haha well thank you! it’s always a good idea to befriend your neighborhood CC bully. 
(there was a joke in that. nvm if that made no sense lol.)</p>
<p>That sentence confused me haha.</p>
<p>Don’t worry as long as there aren’t anymore mistakes like that, they should just forget about it.</p>
<p>Terrible start to a Uva essay…</p>
<p>I’d worry about it, but I’d be worrying unnecessarily.</p>
<p>its the common app one, if it makes a difference.
i did manage to write the 250 words for the UVa essays properly… =</p>
<p>Including or excluding negative modifiers, e.g. “not,” is a very common error and difficult to detect. Catching it by eye is difficult because most readers unconsciously correct the error based on the context. Grammar checking programs cannot detect it either. By definition, that means that you have a very good chance your readers will not notice it, and if they do, I would be surprised if they put much weight on it. It took me three reads to find it after you told me there was an error.</p>
<p>So relax. You can do anything about it anyway. </p>
<p>(Let’s see who catches that one) :-)</p>
<p>well its a shame thats how common app essay starts since it goes to all schools not jst UVA…</p>
<p>hopefully you’ll fall on a kind admissions director who will let it fly. but im thinkin this wont look good. rereading your essays for those type of mistakes is crucial.</p>
<p>hartin. maybe hard to detect, but i the sentence makes no sense without it.</p>
<p>and its “you cannot do anything”
or “you can’t do anything”.</p>
<p>even so, gl shala. no use worrying about it now. whats done is done. just look ahead, work hard and ace your midyear report would be my advice.</p>
<p>Seriously folks, between quality of the content, quality of the writing, and one or two grammar errors, what weight do you believe a high caliber school places on each? My guess is something like 45/45/10. (Obviously if a paper is riddled with errors, then it is just unacceptable regardless of the other factors.)</p>
<p>I would say that I find at least one mis-print in half the novels I read. You can find five a day in a major newspaper. It happens. It is not good and it is distracting, but it will not outweigh excellence in the factors they are seeking.</p>
<p>On top of all of that, the essay is probably less than 20% of the total app.</p>
<p>If it makes you feel any better my essay to Chapel Hill had more than one error. At this point I think I must have sent the wrong draft. Didn’t seem to hurt me, although at the time I was sure it would, I got a likely letter and an offer.</p>
<p>I remember sweating every detail when I was in your shoes. Try to let it go.</p>
<p>I think I had 7 syntactical infelicities across my 3 UVA essays.</p>