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Gnats, typos, and other pesky things

December 2, 2021 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

This is an assortment of the funny/not-funny typos in MBA applications that have come across our desk in the recent past — funny because of what they are, not funny if they make it into an actual application!

(in an international applicant’s essay): “I spent one year as an exchange student in a blue collard town in Ohio”

(in a military applicant’s essay): “I decided to go into the uninformed services based on my grandfather’s service…”

(in an essay where an applicant was talking about fighting for gender wage equality): “It is nice to know that parody is happening.”

It’s way easy for these mistakes to happen, because those are all real words! Another one: “I used sweat equality to get to where I am.”

None of these are the end of the world. Even if they did make it into an actual submitted essay, it’s no biggie. The reader knows what you mean, and in some cases, might not even notice the error. The brain is remarkably good at filling in gaps and finding meaning even when information is missing.

The issue though is that spellcheck won’t catch these things, and those readers who do spot them may get snagged on them, because they can potentially come across as careless.

If spellcheck didn’t catch them then does that mean the applicant didn’t do more than run spellcheck on the essay?

You could call these spellcheck betrayals and again, not mortal sins when it comes to MBA apps — but not so great if they happen!

Wanna know what else spellcheck won’t catch?

If you have the wrong school name in the essay.

And yes, this happens A LOT.

“I really want to go to Booth because of the tight-knit community…”

However, this is an essay submitted for Tuck.

Yes, it happens a lot. When you do a save-as or a copy-and-paste of essay content, be extra careful that you do not replicate such errors into the new draft! In most cases, schools’ essays are unique enough that you can’t really do the content-sharing anyway, but most applicants try it, at least minimally. And it can bite you in the behind if you’re not meticulous.

(This is a reason for submitting applications well ahead of deadline! Last-minute submissions set up the conditions for avoidable mistakes like these!)

There are other such spellcheck-betrayal errors that only eagle-eyed proofreading will catch (the one that crops up too often is “manger” when they mean “manager” and of course the issue that happens when you drop the L from “public”…!).

Plan out the next five weeks of your life and make sure that you’re leaving space in the final stage for rounds of proofreading when you’re fresh. We’ll be talking more about time management and how to maximize your mental energies as we move into crunch mode together.

And of course, those who go through our Essay Decimator essay review process get the benefit of our own well-experienced eagle eyes on your drafts. We don’t correct writing mistakes in essays, but we point them out so you have an opportunity to revisit your work with attention to those details. (The main value you gain from the Essay Decimator process is the content strategy critique, where we assess whether your approach to the question and the presentation of ideas in answer to the prompt is compelling and meaningful, in light of what this school responds to — and along the way, when there are errors in constructions and mechanics, then we alert you to those too.)

Good luck with your essay-writing. We’ll be with you all the way, BSer!

Filed Under: Uncategorized, writing tips

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So who the heck is EssaySnark, anyway?!

We're the snarky experts in MBA admissions!

Sometimes amused and often appalled by what candidates write in their MBA applications to top bschools, EssaySnark created this little blahg to share common mistakes. Learn from them and avoid making admissions directors laugh (or want to hurl) when they read your essays. If you are hoping to have your essay reviewed anonymously on the blahg for free, submit it for consideration.

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