I'm done interviewing now, and I find myself receiving several notes from program directors, faculty, etc. They are all varied (i.e. handwritten, e-mail, typed snail mail, some short, some long, some personal, some generic).

My questions is: do all programs send these types of notes out or do they really mean something?

I've heard it's pretty program specific. My friend and I got the same generic email from one program asking us to rank them #1 from the dept of medicine. This makes me wonder how serious they really are about us. I've heard several schools do NOT do that because they feel that to be unethical behavior and they don't want to deal with the "you told me to rank you #1, I did and didn't get in" issue.