I made some really shameful errors in my Yale SCEA app that I’m constantly beating myself over the head for. These are the stupid things I did:
-wrote “its” instead of “it’s” around 3-4 times
-wrote the same word twice (typo)
-Accidentally erased a conjuction (like the word “and”) where it should have been so now the sentence sounds weird (this happened TWICE)
I have great stats, ECs, and recs but these essays have me so darn ashamed. Please be completely honest, are they gonna throw my app in the garbage now? :’(
First of all, they might not care. To me a perfect essay look like it was done by the student’s parent or hired coach.
More importantly, Yale is a reach for nearly every student. Generally very competitive top schools such as Yale get at least 80% of their applications from very competitive students (80% is a number that Stanford put in an article a few years back, MIT has said 85% in a different communication). Quite a few spots go to athletes, legacy students, and URMs. This means that if your application is perfect, your chances are still not going to be better than the overall acceptance rate, which was 6.3% last year.
No one is perfect. Schools know this.
My advice is do not worry about it, and focus on match and safety schools that you also need to apply to.
100%: if you are not accepted to Yale it will NOT be b/c of a handful of minor typos in your essays.
Find a better way to deal with your anxiety. You have no control anymore: you will get in / deferred / denied. Either work hard at putting it out of your head- pick something to do every.single.time you start getting anxious: go for a run / do a chore for your household / dance to music in your room / work on a memorization task- anything that requires your brain to do something more useful than stewing.
You’ll be fine. I did the same and still got into college----a few grammatical errors will not be why you were accepted or not. Now get off of CC and go read a book!
Hi! This is Lillian from Prompt. It’s okay to make grammar mistakes in essays! Content is what really matters. The reader will be focusing on what you told them about yourself. Please don’t stress out. You’ll be fine!
The thread started with consoling the student about his/her Yale anxiety (I’m all for it!) and ended with “It’s okay to make grammar mistakes in essays!” - which strikes me as a bridge too far, considering the mantra repeated my all AOs: “proofread, proofread, proofread.”
But @collegemom3717 is so right: If you are not accepted to Yale it will NOT be b/c of a handful of minor typos in your essays.
@ArtsyKidDad Reading this I thought that Prompt’s isn’t giving the best advice to other people reading this thread----yes, some mistakes are fine but too many can and will get in the way of reading your essay.
