I was wondering what the consensus is out there on writing letters to the program director expressing interest. In other words, if I am fairly certain what my number one choice will be, should i write a letter to the program director stating that? or will that be perceived negatively? Also, would email be appropriate?

thanks everyone in advance,

asm

In Iserson's Getting into Residency, he reccomends that people send a typed professional letter of interest to every program that they interview at with a hand-written note at the end to give it a personal touch. I've been e-mailing most of my programs just because I imagine that PD's get tired of getting all this junk mail. The only one that I've hand written a note to was a program which sent me a hand written note first thanking me for interviewing there (I imagine that his secretary writes them all). A radiology PD at my school said that he throws away all LOI as soon as he gets them, and I suspect that most PD's do this but I would reccomend sending something just in case.

Thanks Ckent!

I actually have been sending thank you letters to all my interviewers (i.e. not necessarily the program director), but I actually wanted to send the letter to the PD of my number one program...

Thanks again,
ASM

An open question to everyone in the Match this year:

Do you think it is a good idea to explicitly state "I will be ranking your program as my first choice in the Match" in the letter to the PD of the program you are ranking number one?

What have people heard from their Deans or PDs at their schools regarding this issue?

thanks,
ej

Regarding explicitly letting interviewers et. al. know that your top choice is your top choice:

By all means, do it!

That's from a resident involved with admissions in one of the biggie IM programs. I don't know what the official stance is from our own PD or dean, but the word that's been handed down at least two generations before me is to let your enthusiasm be known -- that's how they (the previous generations) did it, and by golly that's how I'm doin' it too!