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I'm not sure that I agree here. Signatures are so varied that it is impossible to categorize them as legit/not legit. I don't find it unlikely that someone would just fake one completely.
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<p>It's actually pretty difficult to forge a signature.</p>
<p>Anyway, I also was accounting for the fact that the kid had had his teachers write the recommendations in the first place. I thought there was a possibility that he merely wanted their signatures.</p>
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That is true. However, there is another option: The school doesn't submit the surveys. Mine doesn't. Each teacher writes a personalized letter for each student and sends them off to colleges (I do not know whether the CC does or the teacher does). I believe the students give them envelopes, but I'm not sure.
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<p>No. Look at the teacher recommendation on the Common App website--Yale uses the Common App. But enough speculating... I dgaf about this anymore really. (I sort of want to know what happens though.)</p>
<p>"It's actually pretty difficult to forge a signature."</p>
<p>Oh, definitely. Why would he need to forge one?</p>
<p>"Anyway, I also was accounting for the fact that the kid had had his teachers write the recommendations in the first place. I thought there was a possibility that he merely wanted their signatures."</p>
<p>Maybe there was, I wouldn't know. But it isn't the only possibility, in my opinion.</p>
<p>"No. Look at the teacher recommendation on the Common App website--Yale uses the Common App."</p>
<p>Please don't tell me what the policy of my school is. Our teachers write letters about our performance in the classroom and nothing else. They do not fill out the surveys. They mail the letters to the schools, and we send many grads to top institutions.</p>
<p>The teacher recommendations are in a completely different section than the student-submitted information. You don't need to upload the recommendations; they get sent to the schools directly. So the fact that it uses the Common App doesn't negate the possibility of that situation arising.</p>
<p>"But enough speculating... I dgaf about this anymore really. (I sort of want to know what happens though.)"</p>
<p>I would suggest you look at the Common App just to be sure you have a correct understanding of how recommendations are handled at your school. The Common App teacher recommendation form has a survey on it...</p>
<p>"I would suggest you look at the Common App just to be sure you have a correct understanding of how recommendations are handled at your school. The Common App teacher recommendation form has a survey on it..."</p>
<p>Newjack, I understand how the Common App treats teacher recommendations. Let me make this clear (caps are not angry caps):</p>
<p>THE SCHOOL POLICY IS TO IGNORE THE COMMON APP FORMAT. WE MAKE A CHOICE NOT TO USE THEIR FORMS AT ALL. WE USE OUR OWN METHOD OF WRITING AND SENDING TEACHER RECOMMENDATIONS. THE COUNSELING OFFICE MAKES IT VERY CLEAR THAT THEY DO NOT USE THE NORMAL FORMAT.</p>
<p>They do this to avoid categorizing or comparing students directly, if my guessing skills are any good. Instead, each teacher writes a completely honest and candid recommendation about the classroom performance of the student.</p>
<p>I don't want you to think I'm really POd at you. I'm not, and I actually appreciate that you took the time to dig up the link so that you could make sure I understood everything.</p>
<p>First of all, the Common App asks teachers to fill out the survey and to write a recommendation.</p>
<p>Second, I was just making sure you actually understood the process as you have yet to apply for college. There's no need for you to be rude/overly confrontational.</p>
<p>Third, this is another example of why the dgaf attitude is appropriate. You try to help some people and they act like a huge prick in return. ;)</p>
<p>"First of all, the Common App asks teachers to fill out the survey and to write a recommendation."</p>
<p>No, the Common App recommendation forms include a survey. The teachers at my school don't bother with them. Not a single teacher uses them. They go completely ignored and unused. You have to print them off separately. We don't. The teachers just write their own letters.</p>
<p>"Second, I was just making sure you actually understood the process as you have yet to apply for college. There's no need for you to be rude/overly confrontational."</p>
<p>I understand the process perfectly well. I thanked you for making sure that I understood how it worked. </p>
<p>"Third, this is another example of why the dgaf attitude is appropriate. You try to help some people and they act like a huge prick in return."</p>
<p>Make sure you give the help appropriately. You repeatedly told me that I was flat-out wrong about how my school works. Does that sound reasonable to you? I thanked you for your attempt at help, but you didn't give it in the best way possible, I think. Instead of telling me how the process at my school works, which I made very clear was different from the process used by the Common App (thus implying that I knew the difference), you might have just said that it's unusual or that most schools use the surveys, which makes the scenario unlikely. Instead, you condescendingly assumed my ignorance.</p>
<p>I'm a huge prick sometimes. ;) But so are you. Funny, you've grown on me. That doesn't usually happen.</p>
<p>Newjack88 introduced a thought I hadn't seen yet, which for me makes possibility 1 (defined, way back when, as the letters sent by teachers and the recs received at Yale match - meaning Yalecheater didn't) greater. '</p>
<p>If YC intended to forge recs, why would he bother to ask the teachers to write anything? Is it because, as NJ88 suggests, that he wanted to forge the signatures? Possible, but it doesn't make any sense - by the time anyone got around to checking signatures, they would already have contacted the teacher - who would have confirmed that s/he never wrote one. </p>
<p>Or, is it because YC made a spur-of-the-moment decision? We know he didn't waive the right to read the recs. Maybe he read them, was surprised or unhappy about something in them, and decided then and there to rewrite them? </p>
<p>Doesn't matter - either way the same moral and ethical issues are generated - but factually I'm curious about how this is all going to turn out. I'm still thinking (hoping) that YC didn't cheat.**</p>
<p>**If YC didn't cheat, it does not in any way suggest that OP did the wrong thing. To the contrary, YC did the right thing and it sounds like it's being handled properly. For those of you who suggest that OP will for some reason be happy if YC is guilty and gets a severe punishment, I suggest that is assuming way, way too much. If I were in OP's shoes, for example, I would be very sad if YC is caught and punished. Not sad due to regret, but sad because YC clearly made a very stupid choice - his decision, not OP's, the school's, or Yale's.</p>
<p>Username is on to something. Of the people below, and of those who have contributed since, which are high school students, which are college students, and which are adults? I think it would be interesting to see the trends for each such category. I'm also interested to know if I'm the only adult on this thread...</p>
<p>........ anyway, i'm somewhere between a high school student and a college student. just take me as a college student.</p>
<p>i won't bother quoting the exact words, but a shoutout to whomever said that we shouldn't snitch because "nobody benefits":</p>
<p>1) Yale benefits by not having a cheater in their midst and deterring more cheating, thus giving themselves a better student population. The school benefits by deterring other students from cheating on their apps and shutting off one avenue for cheating with new measures which I predict would be implemented. The applicant pool benefits by having one less cheater too, making the selection process fairer.</p>
<p>2) In any case, even if it DIDN'T benefit anyone, does that make it wrong? I don't gain anything from watching mindless TV shows. Am I wrong? I don't gain anything by playing computer games which have no practical benefits. Am I wrong? I'm free to do whatever I want, including snitching, even if it benefits nobody. Which is what the OP has done, hate it or love it.</p>
<p>laxtaxi, if you were to forge a rec, you would definitely need to get your teachers to write their own recs before replacing those recs with your own. You know you're gonna become very famous by getting into Yale; teachers do talk among themselves, and once the teachers realize that none of them wrote a rec for you you'd be busted. also, people would ask you which teachers wrote your recs, and if you didn't actually ask those teachers to write for you, it's super easy to get busted once the students go to the same teachers and tell them that you mentioned their names.</p>
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Yale benefits by not having a cheater in their midst and deterring more cheating, thus giving themselves a better student population. The school benefits by deterring other students from cheating on their apps and shutting off one avenue for cheating with new measures which I predict would be implemented. The applicant pool benefits by having one less cheater too, making the selection process fairer.
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Great points, screwitlah. What you say gets at the heart of the situationeveryone benefits by reporting a serious wrong (i.e., forgery in this case).</p>
<p>tetrisfan, I'm with you. Maybe we'll have to wait for the movie?</p>
<p>Here's the latest from OP, from yesterday:</p>
<p>"the other teachers wrote them...but apparently he didn't waive his right to read it. So whatever they wrote he saw, and he himself mailed it out(so they told me)</p>
<p>You can fill in the blanks. the teachers are going to ask Yale to compare the letters sent with what they wrote."</p>
<p>ive earned everything ive worked for, yet I still respect other people enough to let them make their own decisions and live with their own consequences as long as it does not involve me.</p>
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ive earned everything ive worked for, yet I still respect other people enough to let them make their own decisions and live with their own consequences as long as it does not involve me.