Post-interview correspondence thread

choirboy said:

I wouldn't worry about it.

Programs tell people that they are ranked to match all the time, and every year people have the sob stories about how they can't believe they didn't match to program X. Since there are programs that are known to move you down their list they don't think you are at the top of theirs, why limit yourself? I'm not advocating telling everyone that they are your number one, but letting a limited number of places know how much you want to be there just seems prudent, especially if you don't think you are a slam dunk for your top program.

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I thought all the post-interview correspondence didn't really matter in terms of influencing how an applicant is ranked........

Do any other programs, besides MGH, do this?

gutonc said:

Do you have questions? If so, ask them. If not, they honestly don't care that much about what you think of them. They're clearly ranking you somewhere. As long as you don't reply with "go f**k yourself" nothing you do is going to change your place on their rank list.

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That answered my question. Thanks gutonc!

I did get a wonderful hand written note from an Assistant PD from Michigan. It is a very heart warming gesture, but before I get my hopes up, what is the group consensus on how often Michigan does this? Do they send hand written notes to everyone? If so, I hope there benefits package includes hand massages.

Not that it would lessen how nice the gesture is, but I want to gauge what significance it has on my being ranked.

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thes_hunter said:

I did get a wonderful hand written note from an Assistant PD from Michigan. It is a very heart warming gesture, but before I get my hopes up, what is the group consensus on how often Michigan does this? Do they send hand written notes to everyone? If so, I hope there benefits package includes hand massages.

Not that it would lessen how nice the gesture is, but I want to gauge what significance it has on my being ranked.

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Thank you letters are just that - a thank you letter. Some people email, some people write. Same thing. Some programs write back to all candidates, some don't write back at all. So make nothing of it other than courtesy.

My $0.02 - rank based on where you thought you would fit the best and not on who hand wrote you thank you letters and you will be happier in the end. Good Luck!

CanIMakeIt said:

Thank you letters are just that - a thank you letter. Some people email, some people write. Same thing. Some programs write back to all candidates, some don't write back at all. So make nothing of it other than courtesy.

My $0.02 - rank based on where you thought you would fit the best and not on who hand wrote you thank you letters and you will be happier in the end. Good Luck!

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Thanks, always reassuring to hear a voice of reason. I'm batting ~0.500 on replies to my thank you emails and because of just how insane this process is, was beginning to wonder if I should read anything into the places that didn't reply. I think I was definitely a lot more balanced before September.

gutonc said:

I'm just going to refer you back to this post right here which, if I do say so myself, is the ultimate "voice of reason."

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LOL .. yes that too!

gutonc said:

I'm just going to refer you back to this post right here which, if I do say so myself, is the ultimate "voice of reason."

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Haha, fair enough! I think that was my initial attitude until some people started replying to my TY letters which heightened my paranoia re: the silent ones. At least I haven't degenerated to the point where I'm sending thank you's for thank you replies!

gutonc said:

It is very program dependent and - as a moderately competitive applicant a few years ago before the economy took a massive dump - none of the 18 places I interviewed at offered a paid 2nd look. I wouldn't hold your breath.

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Isn't 18 programs a lot to interview at if you are an American grad who is an MD, Phd and is "moderately competitive"?

Were you that afraid you may not match in your top 10 or so or were you just not sure where you wanted to go so you wanted to check out a lot of places?

Anyone receive post-interview correspondence from any of the following this cycle? UCLA, Stanford, UChicago, WashU, UWash, Michigan, or Cornell?

Couple of them responded to my thank you notes. Nothing else from ucla, Stanford, Chicago, Michigan.

Hm, sounds like you're doing better than me. Nary a peep even to thank you notes at the vast majority of places...

digdug2 said:

Hm, sounds like you're doing better than me. Nary a peep even to thank you notes at the vast majority of places...

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do you mean replies to thank you notes or letters/calls from pd? i got replies from ucla and stanford (didnt interview at the remainder) but it was totally interviewer dependent, and didnt seem to have any significance outside of just being sociable. other places interviewers didnt respond at all, and whether or not the interview went well didnt seem to have a correlation... again seems very interviewer dependent and as this thread has claimed, it supposedly doesnt mean much

jarmen said:

do you mean replies to thank you notes or letters/calls from pd? i got replies from ucla and stanford (didnt interview at the remainder) but it was totally interviewer dependent, and didnt seem to have any significance outside of just being sociable. other places interviewers didnt respond at all, and whether or not the interview went well didnt seem to have a correlation... again seems very interviewer dependent and as this thread has claimed, it supposedly doesnt mean much

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Yeah, basically silence on replies TY notes (generally via snail mail). Certainly, I've not had any other correspondence either.

digdug2 said:

Yeah, basically silence on replies TY notes (generally via snail mail). Certainly, I've not had any other correspondence either.

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oh i never send snail mail... was asked not to on my first interview and just stuck to that. considering most of my correspondence has bee a simple "thanks it was a pleasure speaking with u" i cant imagine they would go out of their way to respond to snail mail, i mean half of them dont even take the time to respond to an email lol

Quick Q: I snail mailed thank you cards filled with george clooney meets obama smooth talk filling the blank insides of the card 3 weeks after my iv. Win or Fail or otherwise?

GOINGDUMB said:

Quick Q: I snail mailed thank you cards filled with george clooney meets obama smooth talk filling the blank insides of the card 3 weeks after my iv. Win or Fail or otherwise?

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You win ! You are ranked #1

GOINGDUMB said:

Quick Q: I snail mailed thank you cards filled with george clooney meets obama smooth talk filling the blank insides of the card 3 weeks after my iv. Win or Fail or otherwise?

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3 weeks is probably too long (IMO) but I really don't think thank you cards matter that much either way in helping/hurting your rank.

95% of my interviewers or PCs have offered contact info for my interviewer.

For the 5% that didn't, do you guys ask for an email or card? I mainly do it for post-interview thank you's. I've tried emailing a PC after one of those interviews, but she never got back to me with the info. (If you were wondering... yes I did also thank the PC, rightfully so, in the process of requesting that info).

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SilverMoon said:

I've managed to find all of their contact information via google and their hospital websites. Almost all the emails are formulaic anyway (ie [email protected]) so it's not too hard to generalize the rules for each institution to the one or two that were tough to find.

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Tried doing that. I tried digging their directory, google, faculty webpage, etc.

While it the formatting may be true, some last names are actually abbreviated in the email address.

Maybe time to whip out the pen and write a card..

For future reference, is it appropriate to ask for a business card? I have been tempted a few times, but didn't want to come off as overly aggressive.

emboli said:

For future reference, is it appropriate to ask for a business card? I have been tempted a few times, but didn't want to come off as overly aggressive.

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Yes it is appropriate.

emboli said:

For future reference, is it appropriate to ask for a business card? I have been tempted a few times, but didn't want to come off as overly aggressive.

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I just call the number provided on eras and ask. It takes 2 min.

emboli said:

For future reference, is it appropriate to ask for a business card? I have been tempted a few times, but didn't want to come off as overly aggressive.

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I always ask for a card if they don't offer one first. It's perfectly OK, and they seem to expect it.

FWIW I've heard back from maybe 1/3 of the programs I applied to - I sent emails to most (and snail mail to a few initially before saying "screw it" and just sending emails) as thank you notes, and a few responded; some with reply emails, some with snail mail. Most were short and sweet; none suggested ranking to match, but asked me to "very highly consider" their programs. There's also a lot of programs which entirely refrain from post-interview correspondence because the ACGME has a lot of regulations and they do not want to get dinged as match violators.

There's so much stupid misinformation going around that I'm glad there are residents/attendings here to clear up anything about how much TY notes/post-interview correspondence actually matters (which sounds like, none).

I've heard back from about ~2/3 of the interviewers I sent my thank you notes to. Curiously, some of them replied 3-4 weeks after (I did this all through email) so who knows. In some instances (but not all), the replies were cc'd to the PD/program coordinators. I've also received some handwritten letters as well, but from the sounds of it, I really get the impression that some programs send handwritten letters to everyone. I really wouldn't put too much stock in any of this unless someone's letter says "You are our #1", and even then there are old threads on SDN which seem to suggest that some programs will tell you that you're ranked to match and then not really follow through.

Anyone hear anything from Stanford? Do Cali programs generally not engage in correspondence?

Bump... Just wondering the same about Columbia.

Apologies in advance if someone has already answered this - but any ideas on how to word an email trying to say "you are my number 1, please rank me!"? I'm assuming there are more eloquent ways to say this... haha.

Any reply to thank you emails by
- Boston University ?
- University of Connecticut ?

Sunny1007 said:

Any reply to thank you emails by
- Boston University ?
- University of Connecticut ?

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Are you asking if the people we sent thank yous to replied?

Received an unsolicited email from the PD at Penn today. Wondering if anyone else did as well?

am9451 said:

Received an unsolicited email from the PD at Penn today. Wondering if anyone else did as well?

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Yes, I did via noreply eras, so not putting any stock into that.

Anyone receive any unsolicited post-interview correspondence yet?

jarmen said:

Bump... Just wondering the same about Columbia.

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I've heard nothing from: Stanford, UWash, UCLA; Columbia, MGH, Brigham, Hopkins; a month of so ago received some kind, semi-personalized words from Duke, UChicago, Northwestern, WashU. Probably sent to most applicants. Right after my UCSF interview I got a "you're a good candidate" kind of e-mail from Hollander, which I imagine is generic.

No idea what this all means. 3 of my top 4 (including my #1, who I told was #1) have told me nothing. Maybe I'll be matching at my #8 . Oh well.

Is there less post-interview communication initiated by programs this year? Doesn't seem to be as many post about it (i.e. rank to match stuff, etc)

emboli said:

Is there less post-interview communication initiated by programs this year? Doesn't seem to be as many post about it (i.e. rank to match stuff, etc)

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That is exactly what I was wondering as well.

emboli said:

Is there less post-interview communication initiated by programs this year? Doesn't seem to be as many post about it (i.e. rank to match stuff, etc)

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No, but all of your medical schools have sent the Top 25 programs in the U.S. an audit of what internet sites you visited while in school. Those of you who are posting on SDN have been banned from all of those programs this year.

Don't shoot the messenger.

Has anyone heard from Georgetown? Solicited or not?

I've received some handwritten postcards and a couple phone calls. I would imagine that many others are in the same boat as me and just haven't posted it. I'd like to think that I'm a decent IM candidate, but based on this board, there are many out there who are more competitive than me.

But just so people don't freak out reading this, my phone calls have been related to fast-tracking and not categorical IM.

HoldTheCoffee said:

I've received some handwritten postcards and a couple phone calls. I would imagine that many others are in the same boat as me and just haven't posted it. I'd like to think that I'm a decent IM candidate, but based on this board, there are many out there who are more competitive than me.

But just so people don't freak out reading this, my phone calls have been related to fast-tracking and not categorical IM.

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There were a few programs that I looked at (Brigham, UWash, and maybe Hopkins?) that explicitly said on the interview day that they are not contacting any applicants after the interview day to maintain the "purity of the process". It sounded like this was a relatively new policy at Brigham and UWash. This may be a reaction to the widely known post-correspondence abuse of MGH and the realization that post-interview correspondence makes its way quickly to the SDN boards, in which case the program reviews its favorites to the applicant pool, and applicants may subsequently rank other programs higher. For programs other than MGH, this poses a significant problem as most places must go relatively far down on their rank list to fill all their slots.

machomed said:

There were a few programs that I looked at (Brigham, UWash, and maybe Hopkins?) that explicitly said on the interview day that they are not contacting any applicants after the interview day to maintain the "purity of the process". It sounded like this was a relatively new policy at Brigham and UWash. This may be a reaction to the widely known post-correspondence abuse of MGH and the realization that post-interview correspondence makes its way quickly to the SDN boards, in which case the program reviews its favorites to the applicant pool, and applicants may subsequently rank other programs higher. For programs other than MGH, this poses a significant problem as most places must go relatively far down on their rank list to fill all their slots.

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Makes sense to me. In a perfect world where everyone understands how the match algorithm works, neither the programs nor the applicants should really allow themselves to be influenced by any post-interview correspondences at all.

I would say though that the BWH/MGH/UCSF contingent are pretty quiet on the boards this year, so maybe the paranoia is cutting both ways.

Unsolicited emails from:
PD at Yale
Interviewer at Stanford
PD at WashU

Unsolicited letters (not thank you card that you get post-interview)
Interviewer at Duke

Highly likely to match email
Someone at BIDMC

Other random letters/emails from PDs at programs people probably have less interest in.

Content of the emails/letters varied from vague/generic "you are an extraordinary candidate and would love to have you in our intern class"...less vague "the selection committee thought very highly of you"...to "based on historical evidence...you will likely match if you should choose blah blah".

Emails from:

Mayo PD
UTSW PD
Northwestern PD

Has anyone heard anything from UAB?