<p>I said "began" when it should have been the present tense "begin" in one of the short answers. How screwed am I? (and yess i submitted it already...)</p>
<p>Unfortunately, yes. Your one small mistake clearly demonstrates that you lack control over your writing. You do not have grip of grammar and lack touch to proof-read your work. Sorry, but as soon as they see that error, admission officers are going to throw your application into the closest trashcan.</p>
<p>I can see the adcom now… “peace and word to your mother!”</p>
<p>I once made a grammatical error on an English essay, and my teacher failed me; same concept for Stanford Admissions</p>
<p>k thats what i thought. I guess i thought when it said “do not feel compelled to write in complete sentences” they were going to be lax about that part so i didnt really even check over the short answers. Instead i read over my essays a 100 times. I guess thats life…</p>
<p>Wait, are you actually believing those jokers? They’re kidding. You’re fine.</p>
<p>Who’s kidding soadquake981? This is Stanford – with so many highly-qualified and well-articulated applicants, grammatical errors actually become important indicators of carelessness. Almost all of the applicants proofread their answers and essays a couple of times to ensure everything is correct.</p>
<p>Well I made two grammar mistakes in my essays. I got into SCEA</p>
<p>@TheAscendency - collegebiomed was kidding</p>
<p>They’re right. Don’t worry about grammatical errors. I made about five errors (one of which actually altered the meaning of the sentence), but I got in REA. :)</p>
<p>However, this does not mean you will be excused from, say, maybe ten or more bad errors.</p>
<p>ahahhaha I was kidding. they read thousands of applications. Unless you spelled like car cahheruewkdfr, then they probably won’t care</p>
<p>wat r u gize tauking about? i make errers awl the time, and i got intwo Stanford. :-P</p>
<p>No, but I just applied RD. I HOPE I get in. :-)</p>
<p>Hold up. Who is and is not kidding?</p>
<p>I think if you’re considering attending Stanford, you should be able to determine who’s kidding and who’s not. I counted at least half a dozen mistakes in my essays (although I had to write several more than you guys) and I got into Stanford just fine.</p>
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<p>And you should have been able to determine I was kidding.</p>
<p>…i hate you guys…I could’ve killed myself, lol. Thanks, now I will get rejected by Stanford in peace, knowing that it was based on merit not one grammar mistake.</p>
<p>I had my friend read my CommonApp essay, and she emailed it back with corrections (done in red). I fixed them all and switched them to black, but I missed one. I was using “effect” as a verb, and my friend didn’t know that that was acceptable in some cases, so she sent it back as “affect” with the “a” in red. I failed to notice this until after I had submitted the essay to Stanford, but I still got in REA. </p>
<p>Although the little things contribute to the whole, they don’t make or break you, unless your writing is riddled with little errors. </p>
<p>Don’t freak out :)</p>