Customizing thank you letters

[SphereGlobe]

I just interviewed at a program where I had 6 interviewers and two coordinators. I'm going to try REALLY hard to say the ways I love the program in 8 different ways in my thank you letters, but I have a feeling at least some of it may get repetitive (there are only so many professional substitutes for "amazing"). Do you guys customize your thank you letters in case they get passed around?

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[NotAProgDirector]

They don't get passed around. They don't matter at all.

 

[AdmiralChz]

Yeah, it can't hurt to do so. Definitely don't just cut and paste - I tried to put in a small anecdote about the interview: "I enjoyed hearing your perspective on XYZ" type of thing to remind the person who you are. But don't sweat too much on it as they really don't matter all that much.

 

[ThoracicGuy]

Eh. I was sitting in the same room as my PD when we both got our "thank you" emails from an applicant. It looked a little bad that they were word for word identical.

If you're going to send them, take the five minutes to craft at least something different about each one.

But if it had never been sent in the first place, then you wouldn't have felt a little bad about what they did...

Hence not doing thank you letters...

 

[RangerBob]

I always send thank-you letters as a professional courtesy. I keep them short and to the point, and include at least one personal tidbit, like "I enjoyed talking to you about hiking the PCT."

There are two goals of a thank you letter
1) To show professional courtesy
2) To plant a seed of reminder of who you are

The latter likely doesn't matter anyway with residency interviews as interviewers generally make up their minds right after they meet with you, and fill our their evaluation of you before they'd even receive the thank-you note. I suppose there's a possibility they don't do it until the following day, which is why I sent e-mail thank yous the night of the interview.

So I agree they likely accomplish nothing, but I still think it's common courtesy and a good habit.