A.I. CounselorA.I. Counselor educates on how to stand out in high school, the college admissions process, and beyond.

Avoid Application Typos: Your College Essay Guide #shorts

19 Sept 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

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In this concise YouTube Short, A.I. COUNSELOR warns applicants that submitting a college essay with typos—especially in the opening paragraph—can signal a lack of care to admissions officers. The speaker cites a real example where a student misspelled "college" as "collage" in the first sentence, and highlights other common slip‑ups such as leftover placeholder text and incorrect pronouns from recycled essays. The core recommendation is a simple, time‑boxed proofreading step: spend 20 minutes reading the entire application aloud before hitting submit, ensuring the document presented to a stranger reflects attention to detail.

Chapters

Sabotage number 7, submitting an application with typos in the very first paragraph. I've personally seen a student write, I'm extremely passionate about this collage, and that was in the opening line of the essay to that college. Not a metaphor, an actual typo in the actual first sentence about the actual school they were applying to. Look, Everyone makes mistakes, but sloppy errors— misspelled school names, leftover placeholder text, the wrong pronoun from a recycled essay— tell an admissions reader something specific. This student did not care enough to proofread the one document that represents them to a stranger making a life-altering decision. It takes 20 minutes to read your application out loud before you hit submit. 20 minutes. Do it.