Hey All, I was reviewing my application the other day and I noticed a minor grammatical mistake in my personal statement. I had wrote something in the plural that was supposed to be in the singular. I don't know how I missed it, I must of reviewed the thing some 5-6 times before I sent it, I had a whole bunch of other people read it too, but they never caught it. How badly will this reflect on my app? Thanks
do not worry about it. If the error is minor, it would not be a determining things in your application anyway.
other people have asked about this, and other people have mentioned that they have been accepted to schools despite typos.
I was kicking myself in the a** when i realized after i submitted an online secondary that I used the word effects instead of affects in the additional information section. It was to Yale...my #1 choice of all the schools I had to mess it up on. I hope this doesn't AFFECT... lol.... my application too much cuz that will have a bad EFFECT on me. lol
Don't worry. At least half of the secondaries themselves that I've gotten have had typos on them - if the ad coms can't do it they shouldn't expect you to.
I did the same thing for my personal statement last year!!! I could not believe that I made that mistake, for I had reviewed that damn personal statement over and over. I was incredibly paranoid and envisioned adcoms sitting around a table, reading my grammatically flawed essay, and tossing in right in the garbage. I noticed that I made the mistake right after I submitted the AMCAS application (So, atleast the UC application had no grammatical errors). It was never brought up at any interview and I received secondaries to all but one school that I applied to (and they received the UC application). I wouldn't worry about making one minor grammatical error, but if you have multiple errors it will most likely have very bad consequences. When I saw the title of this thread I immediately thought of effect/affect. So, when I read your post I felt much better Atleast I am not the only one who has made that error!
A single error is not going to make or break your application. At the most, it looks sloppy. But multiple errors are noticed, and can make you appear unprofessional. You're right to go over the essay yourself 5-6 times, but it's often hard to spot your own mistakes -- you know what you meant to say, and your mind sort of fills in the gaps. Having friends or family review it can also be helpful, but they might not be critical enough. Besides professional editing services, there are often services at university English departments where you can have your essay reviewed. So don't lose any sleep over it this time, just resolve to do a more careful job on the secondaries!
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