I decided to check through my submitted college essays just to remind myself of what they were all about and If I felt they were sincere enough having not looked at them for a couple of months. I was shocked to find that out of 8 submitted essays (including the common app essay) I made a whopping 10 typos spread across all the essays. The vast majority are small such as the inclusion of an ‘and’ or an ‘a’ at inappropriate moments but a couple will really have the adcoms scratching their heads - ‘McCormick’s also aims to foster both problem solving skills and creativity in each student.’ - that’s genuinely what one of my sentences was. I honestly have no idea how these creeped into the essays as I proofread them all several times and had them all checked by teachers multiple times. I have a hunch during my laughable ‘final touches’ I accidentally added words or didn’t delete words. I’m so disappointed that I didn’t spot these sooner as this could potentially ruin some of my essays that I worked hard on and I do believe that they are generally pretty solid without the errors. How much would this affect my admission chances into these colleges considering that most of the errors are still pretty small?
I don’t understand what the problem is with the sentence you quoted?
I doubt it will keep you out, but it does mean that your essays aren’t as solid as you thought they were. Errors make it look like you didn’t care much. It’s a negative, but I’d say a small one overall–if there were one or two typos per essay, I’d consider that less heinous than all ten in one essay!
^I think it’s supposed to be “McCormick” instead of “McCormick’s”
Anyway, yea like post #1 said, these people will be reading your essay for the first time as opposed to a plethora of times you did. It’s bound to sound funny if you read it over and over again. Even if you did make a mistake, it would likely be unnoticed or ignored.
I heard an admissions rep from a top school say that a few typos won’t get anyone rejected.
I forgot to capitalize ‘i’ in one of my sentences but idrc lol
Don’t worry about minor mistakes. There are even more serious ones like leaving another school’s name in the essay. My submitted 3 rounds of CommonApp and had revised her essays multiple times between submissions. Each time she found some mistakes and corrected them before submission again. If you do find a major mistake, then you may contact the admission office and they may allow you to e-mail a revised version to them.