Grammatical Error on Personal Statement

[Moolteeshoo]

I submitted my personal statement on Jan 2nd.

While re-reading the statement today, I discovered a grammatical error on it.

 

In the second paragraph, I wrote "When I took Introduction to Psychology class, ~".

I think I should have written "When I took the Introduction to Psychology class, ~"

Fortunately, in the rest of the statement, I added "the" to every course name + "class".

 

I'm so worried about the error about "the" now.

Although it is only one error, I think it could have a negative effect on my admission because I'm an international student.

Edited January 12, 2015 by Moolteeshoo

[peachypie]

Most minds when they read would not even catch that.  people read these personal statements fairly quickly and I can guarantee that there are errors in nearly every one of them.  No use in worrying now, what is done is done, but I hardly think this will have large if any implications in your application.

[MerquiseOperatic]

for what it's worth, when i was applying to a master's program last year, i misspelled the name of the program's subject library in more than one place on my application, and yet was still accepted (& offered funding, even). these people almost certainly care more about substance than tiny errors like this, don't worry about it

[rising_star]

People read these things so quickly that most are unlikely to notice. For example, right now I am correctly little typos (similar to yours) in a syllabus for this semester. I used this syllabus last semester, copying a lot of the language (and the typos) from someone else back then. So, even with lots of eyes and months of looking at it, there are mistakes. Life goes on. If that's what keeps you out of a program, you probably didn't want to go there anyway.

[ashiepoo72]

I read something once that was written in a complete jumble except for the first and last letter of each word, and it was essentially legible. I'm not saying that you should write your SOP this way, but I think our eyes glance over a lot of these minor errors applicants freak out over because when we read, we tend to see what we think should be there unless we are looking for specific errors. For example, I (often) miss grammatical and spelling errors in my own writing, but when I edit papers I can track down the most minute of errors. Like rising_star pointed out, adcomms are reading apps super fast, besides. And if someone notices a missing "the" and throws a fit, do you really want to be in that kind of academic environment anyway? Don't fret, you'll be fine