Why must secure recommendations also be signed?

[Tirian]

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Why do recommendations have to be signed when submitted through a secure third-party service?

If someone was going to the trouble of forging a recommendation, adding a signature is just another part of the crime.

Interfolio provides a secure service. Why, then, must recommendations be signed? This makes an already presumptious request even more cumbersome - either they have to sign, scan, and send OR they have to print off a bunch of copies, sign, fold, put in envelope, and send.

Or is it just a conspiracy to prove again that we really will bend over backwards to do anything, please anything you want, just let me into your medical school no matter what you ask pleeeeeeeeeeeease?

 

[AlteredScale]

Why do recommendations have to be signed when submitted through a secure third-party service?

If someone was going to the trouble of forging a recommendation, adding a signature is just another part of the crime.

Interfolio provides a secure service. Why, then, must recommendations be signed? This makes an already presumptious request even more cumbersome - either they have to sign, scan, and send OR they have to print off a bunch of copies, sign, fold, put in envelope, and send.

Or is it just a conspiracy to prove again that we really will bend over backwards to do anything, please anything you want, just let me into your medical school no matter what you ask pleeeeeeeeeeeease?

It's to provide an additional layer of legitimacy. How? I don't know. haha.

It's just the way the process is. You either play the game or leave.

 

[CharmanderMD]

Some schools specifically state that a signature doesn't need to be signed if submitted through a service like Interfolio.

 

[costales]

Yeah, it's a conspiracy to force you to go to med school.

 

[db4277]

It's to provide an additional layer of legitimacy. How? I don't know. haha.

It's just the way the process is. You either play the game or leave.

"Game" is a good way to put it. We run around counting our money, defeating bosses (undergrad? MCAT?), racking up experience points, and completing menial tasks, much in the same way you would in a classic RPG. It's like "ooh no! I forgot to go back to that town and talk to that character so they can give me the key to get into the next cave whatever," except it's real life so it feels demeaning and obtuse.

 

[AvrgPreMedKid]

"Game" is a good way to put it. We run around counting our money, defeating bosses (undergrad? MCAT?), racking up experience points, and completing menial tasks, much in the same way you would in a classic RPG. It's like "ooh no! I forgot to go back to that town and talk to that character so they can give me the key to get into the next cave whatever," except it's real life so it feels demeaning and obtuse.

 

[doreegon]

Yeah, it's a conspiracy to force you to go to med school.

More like it's a conspiracy to get you to pay for an interfolio membership.

 

[ortnakas]

I'm fairly sure that the doctors who submitted my letters to interfolio used an electronic signature (a scan of their actual signature pasted into the document)-- obviously, I didn't see them, but I helped them with other letters as part of my job and that was the norm. None of the schools I applied to had any problems with it.