How negatively will one grammatical error affect my essay on my application? The error was almost unnoticeable to me, but I now I feel so uneasy after finding it.
The error is:
“I grew up in a quaint, small apartment in near Philadelphia…”
It should be: “I grew up in a quaint, small apartment near Philadelphia.”
Oh boy
This is nothing. Do not worry about it.
@suzy100 I should also mention that this is my first sentence of the whole essay. I believe this happened because i was a little over the word limit and made last minute changes like deleting a few words. Oh gosh
you will be fine 
Honestly, if it were anywhere but the first sentence it would not have been a big deal, but I’ll be devil’s advocate here since it is in facts in your first sentence…It will certainly raise eyebrows.
Nothing you can do about it at this point. Just cross your fingers that they don’t care.
IMO, no it won’t. Oh, and BTW, your typo is in your first sentence. 
I’ve said this many many times on this site: If colleges rejected every application with a typo, most would be unable to fill their seats.