<p>Ah, very good response, very heartening to heartening to hear. While many of us may be very intelligent, few among us are geniuses =)</p>
<p>true dat man, true dat :)</p>
<p>In my above post, I meant very heartening to hear... the typo is bugging me.</p>
<p>Hey Ben, here's another question. I was kind of clueless when I filled out these apps and I didn't waive my right to access my recs (I was like hmmm, I never waive any rights voluntarily), and never gave it a second thought. I saw that thread today about recs being worthless without signing... am I screwed?</p>
<p>Yeah I think I might have done that, too. MIT was the first school to which I applied and I honestly did not know whether or not it mattered. I've heard that it shows lack of trust in the person writing the recommendations, however, the teachers who wrote mine put the recs in a sealed envelope and gave them directly to guidance.</p>
<p>Yeah that's what I heard... I trust these teachers implicitly though. I've had one for three years and I've known the other personally since I've been born.</p>
<p>Now that I think about it, the signature has to matter somewhat, or they wouldn't out it on there.</p>
<p>maybe to reduce filing costs? if u sign and waive the right to see it...they can destroy the form. if i remember correctly, caltech did NOT have the field, and had on its rec forms something along the lines of "this document will be destroyed once admissions decisions have been made, regardless of the student's status."</p>
<p>Who knows, maybe Ben will be able to give us a good answer.</p>
<p>I think Ben is on dinner break. Don't blame him, he's been answering questions rapid fire for the past few hours. It's a good thing he's stopped answering, I can finally get back to writing my paper.... Crime and Punishment = not a bad book, but boring paper.</p>
<p>Oh i wasn't expecting him to answer right away... that man is already amazing about answering questions. When he gets to it, he gets to it.</p>
<p>Ben - I have a question. For international applicants it is not required to take SAT II in writing - what if someone toook it and got a low score - do u count it or not?</p>
<p>KirbusPrime - it really depends on the individual situation. If your teachers really like you, they'll probably say the same good things about you whether you've waived your right to see the rec or not.</p>
<p>We put the signature there because most students opt to sign it which allows teachers to be truly forthright without having to worry about how a student might interpret their words. Whoah, that was quite a run-on sentence.. sorry... long day! :-)</p>
<p>Tedjj - I'd say it's the least important of the three. (By the way, the third SAT2 is waived only if you take the TOEFL instead.)</p>
<p>My question is, will not signing hurt my recs credibility? I mean I think I picked two teachers who really liked me...</p>
<p>oh ok I took TOEFL :)</p>
<p>I wouldn't worry too much about it. If your teachers like you, the recs will likely be very genuine. If a teacher is holding back due to a non-waived rec, my guess is that we'd probably be able to tell.</p>
<p>Tedjj - you're all set then. Assuming you did well on the TOEFL, that will be counted instead of the writing SAT2.</p>
<p>Good to know, thanks again Ben!</p>
<p>Thanks Ben :)</p>
<p>Awesome Ben... you da man!</p>
<p>No problem! :-)</p>