Is my yale essay toast?

I would not worry about it.

First of all, they might not care. To me a perfect essay look like it was done by the student’s parent or hired coach.

More importantly, Yale is a reach for nearly every student. Generally very competitive top schools such as Yale get at least 80% of their applications from very competitive students (80% is a number that Stanford put in an article a few years back, MIT has said 85% in a different communication). Quite a few spots go to athletes, legacy students, and URMs. This means that if your application is perfect, your chances are still not going to be better than the overall acceptance rate, which was 6.3% last year.

No one is perfect. Schools know this.

My advice is do not worry about it, and focus on match and safety schools that you also need to apply to.