Admissions Myths Destroyed: Yikes, a Typo – I am Done!
January 11th, 2010
mbaMission hosts a weekly blog series, “Admissions Myths Destroyed,” for our friends at Beat the GMAT. Check out the BTG site for fresh material and ours for “reprints.” The following piece was penned by mbaMission Founder, Jeremy Shinewald:
You have worked painstakingly on your application. You have checked and rechecked your work. You finally press submit and then you discover, to your horror, that you are missing a comma and inadvertently used “too” instead of “to.” The admissions committee is just going to throw your application out, right? Wrong.
There is a fine line between a typo and pervasive sloppiness. If you have typos and grammatical errors everywhere, then you send a negative message about your sense of professionalism and your desire to represent yourself – and thus the target school – in a positive way going forward. If you have a minor mistake or too (ooops, we meant mistake or two) in your text (and there is no magic number; three would not necessarily disqualify you either), then you have a situation that is unfortunate, but not devastating. Admissions committees understand that you are only human and, if you are a strong candidate, the entirety of your professional, community, personal, and academic endeavors, will outweigh these blips.
Don’t dwell on the mistakes. Don’t send new essays. Just accept your own fallibility and move on.
Posted in Admissions Myths Destroyed
