Thank you emails/notes

[DrAwsome]

So it might have been discussed in previous threads so my apologies if I'm repeating this-but when writing/emailing thank you notes, do you write just the program director, or also the other faculty members who interviewed you?

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[johnthomas75]

Unless you made a connection w/a particular faculty member, then I would just send a letter to the program director.

- johnthomas75
http://the-d-o-c-t-o-r.blogspot.com/

 

[DrAwsome]

Unless you made a connection w/a particular faculty member, then I would just send a letter to the program director.

- johnthomas75
http://the-d-o-c-t-o-r.blogspot.com/

See, that's what I was thinking, but I wrote a note to an additional interview in addition to the PD based on advice to write to most interviewers. Now, will it look like I only selected certain people to write ty notes to and will that look bad? I have maybe 2 interviews left for this one interview at a program I loved, but it's hard to personalize the notes without saying the same thing! Do you think it will look bad to leave it as is?

 

[HatchetJack]

As Rad/Onc is such a tough field to match in, I didn't want to chance not matching and wasting 100s of hours of research, study etc...by being lazy with TY notes. Thus, I mailed a hand-written TY note on nice stationary to each person I interviewed with. Don't know how much it mattered, but I ended up matching my 1st choice. I got the impression from several places I interviewed at that small things like that can sometimes make the difference between otherwise equal candidates.

Good luck on the interview trail.

 

[Seldon1985]

Now that I think of it, I wrote hand written TY notes for one program - my top choice and the program I matched into. The rest were emailed. I don't think it makes that much difference, but I haven't yet been on the other side of the table...

 

[ramsesthenice]

I specifically asked people (pd's) and residents on the trail. Almost everyone said it made no difference if you sent anything at all. The majority of programs claim to be very objective in how they rank with the subjective component comming from the interview sheet submitted long before ant TY note us sent. Many even claimed to be annoyed by them (but no one said dont do it).

One advantage if doing email notes is that you can get an idea where you stand by the response (if you get one).

 

[Gfunk6]

It is very unlikely that a program would ever say, "sending thank you notes is a positive for us." That would be a shallow and narcissistic thing to say. However, it is likely that thank you notes may subconsciously put you in better stead.

Think of the situation with drug company feebies. Doctors always claim that these free trips, meals, pens etc. do not change their prescribing habits. Objective studies show that they clearly do. Otherwise why would pharma waste time courting docs?

 

[Neuronix]

One advantage if doing email notes is that you can get an idea where you stand by the response (if you get one).

Just my experience, but I got a lot of positive feedback from programs where I didn't match and kind of lousy feedback from the program where I did match.

I wrote hand written thank yous to the PDs, coordinators, and usually a few but not all interviewers. It was a bit fatiguing at some programs where there were a large number of interviews, so I reserved thank yous at those programs to my favorite interviewers.

 

[inyoface]

I wrote hand written thank yous to the PDs, coordinators, and usually a few but not all interviewers.

A few residents on the trail actually mentioned the risk of hand-written thank you notes not being delivered to the people they're addressed to. Some program coordinators apparently just stuff them into your "file" without making sure people see it. This made me go the way of email... although for my top program I may do both.

 

[Neuronix]

A few residents on the trail actually mentioned the risk of hand-written thank you notes not being delivered to the people they're addressed to.[

This is possible, but I did receive e-mail responses from several faculty and coordinators to my hand-written thank you notes. Perhaps not all were received, and I did have to re-mail three cards due to addresses on websites being wrong.