2nd look & thank you letters

[docvino]

1) is not sending a thank you letter a deal breaker? do they take note of this? how important are these really?

2) 2nd looks. one of my top choices is far from my home. im considering contacting them for a 2nd look. i already know how i'm ranking them and honestly not up for another trip to the opposite part of the country. is this really important for being on their radar? i felt the interview only went ok, so im not sure if another shot in person will make me stand out a bit more.

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[DB2013EM]

1) is not sending a thank you letter a deal breaker? do they take note of this? how important are these really?

2) 2nd looks. one of my top choices is far from my home. im considering contacting them for a 2nd look. i already know how i'm ranking them and honestly not up for another trip to the opposite part of the country. is this really important for being on their radar? i felt the interview only went ok, so im not sure if another shot in person will make me stand out a bit more.

1. At least send an Email. I dont send thank you letters mostly because I feel an email I KNOW it will get to the PD, and my hand writing is atrocious. Also, it gives an opportunity for a response. It's more of a common courtesy, I dont see why you wouldnt send one even if it didnt at all affect your ranking.

2. Most PDs say a 2nd Look is for your purposes only and won't affect your ranking. I've had one program where they implied differently. Don't do it if you are just trying to rub elbows with the program and it wont affect your perception and rakning of them.

 

[Birdstrike]

This is what I would do:

For every interview send a thank you email the next day to the program director, all interviewing faculty, and key residents you talked with. Do not send a mass email CC'ing everyone, but individual emails. Most interviewees will likely do this.

Then immediately follow them all up with a quick hand written thank you note to all the same people. This is more personal, shows interest and may slightly set you apart, since not everyone will go to this effort. Plus, it's a lot easier to delete, miss, skip over or just plan ignore an email amongst dozens of them. A hand written card is harder to ignore.

Do this for every place you interview, even if you rank them last. Why? 1-It's polite. 2-It lets them know you are a gracious person and might just raise your chances by a hair. 3-You never really know whether you will get your first ranking, last one, or somewhere in between.

At this level, simply how much they personally like you makes a big difference.

 

[Transmogrifier]

I've had multiple places explicitly tell me to NOT send thank you letters. Some have also said that second looks are entirely up to us and have no bearing on the rank list.

 

[Birdstrike]

I've had multiple places explicitly tell me to NOT send thank you letters

Really? In those cases, maybe you shouldn't, then. Or, is it like getting an invite to a birthday party that says, "Absolutely no gifts"?

You show up sans gift, yet everyone else brings one anyways, like Larry David in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Have you ever gotten a 4 line thank you note and been irritated by it? I haven't.

Do what you think is right.

 

[EMPD]

I really love this topic. I would tell you that strangely enough, it seems that the people who write the most well thought out thank you notes are the ones who seemed to have little to no interest in the program the day of the interview. It's just odd! As a PD, I often find myself really excited about a candidate and then you actually meet them and realize that there is not as much excitement warranted. The best candidates often come as a surprise after you meet them..quite unexpectedly. The interview is an incredible equalizer. For whatever reason, it is really common for people with exceptional board scores and a great background to simply show up thinking they have their first choice locked, and so they don't put much effort into the interview day. We end up placing them in a prelim rank position that is lower, and then we get some absurd thank you letter that sounds like it is coming from a different person altogether.

 

[homanga]

I really love this topic. I would tell you that strangely enough, it seems that the people who write the most well thought out thank you notes are the ones who seemed to have little to no interest in the program the day of the interview. It's just odd! As a PD, I often find myself really excited about a candidate and then you actually meet them and realize that there is not as much excitement warranted. The best candidates often come as a surprise after you meet them..quite unexpectedly. The interview is an incredible equalizer. For whatever reason, it is really common for people with exceptional board scores and a great background to simply show up thinking they have their first choice locked, and so they don't put much effort into the interview day. We end up placing them in a prelim rank position that is lower, and then we get some absurd thank you letter that sounds like it is coming from a different person altogether.

I think one thing in response to this which I find quite interesting and I'd love to hear you expand a little upon what exactly interested vs. uninterested vibe means in an interview from your side. One thing to the thank you note point and honestly I hope I've seemed interested in all the interviews I've gone on but I think all of us definitely have a recap/assessment period immediately following an interview. Sometimes it's very positive and sometimes it well that was meh and probably not at the top of my list. Either way I've definitely experienced interviews that surprised me in that maybe I wasn't impressed coming into the interview but left very impressed or visa versa. I think you can see that reflected big time in a thank you note, I had a place that was minimally on my radar going in that is at the top of the pile right now and while I don't think I had an uninterested interview infact I feel like it went well, but I don't think I realized how much I liked the program until maybe even a week down the road. However I think my thank you note reflected how impressed I was with the program etc.

 

[Transmogrifier]

Really? In those cases, maybe you shouldn't, then. Or, is it like getting an invite to a birthday party that says, "Absolutely no gifts"?

You show up sans gift, yet everyone else brings one anyways, like Larry David in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Have you ever gotten a 4 line thank you note and been irritated by it? I haven't.

Do what you think is right.

One of those PDs told us the story of an applicant who said she would "give her first born child" to match at that program in a thank you note. They thought it was creepy so they bumped her down a few spots. Turns out they still went below her on their rank list and she didn't match.

The take home point was that they did not trust letters of intent and thank you notes in the least and really, truly, actually did not want to get them.

 

[Birdstrike]

One of those PDs told us the story of an applicant who said she would "give her first born child" to match at that program in a thank you note. They thought it was creepy so they bumped her down a few spots. Turns out they still went below her on their rank list and she didn't match.

The take home point was that they did not trust letters of intent and thank you notes in the least and really, truly, actually did not want to get them.

True, there's a big difference between an honest thank you note and a ridiculous one offering to give your first born in exchange for a spot.

The first shows politeness, the other, desperation.

 

[xenakis]

Dont get me wrong - I like to send TY's just as much as the next guy, but Im tired of this same fickle attitude and balance of them. Yes, handwritten is nice, but no guarantee they will get it - an envelope just as easy to throw out. EM is fast-paced, techie and sending out 7 well written emailed TY's to me makes much more sense than a few skimp handwritten ones received 10 days later.

As an applicant, why can't I write a few well written polished enthusiastic ones even if I wasnt completely entrailled on interview day? I have never been uninterested in looking at a program even if I knew it wasnt my #1 - thats why I applied and did not cancel. A few times interview days dont give you that much info on websites, if they dont have dinners, or no tour before interviews. Thats why an applicant and PD's have time before submitting ROL's. Why is someone a creep if their TY uses a cliche - 'first born child'? They are committed to the program and trying to illustrate that. And why degrade or remove me from the rank list if I cant get a TY within 10 days bc Im still working my butt off as a student in the ed, icu, etc and traveling all over the place throughout the process.

Why can't a TY be just that - a thank you?

/rant

 

[DeadCactus]

I always get a vibe that no applicant wants to write 50 thank you notes, no program wants to receive 1000 of them, and yet here we are just because somehow it became the thing you're supposed to do...

 

[Khaos]

I did a lot of interviewing for my residency 3 and 4 years ago. I can tell you now, no one cared about the thank you note. Once to twice a week we interviewed 10 or more people for 3 to 4 months. That's a lot of thank you notes that ended up in the trash. It made no difference in ranking and from everyone I talked to about the letters we received they put no weight into them.

If you want to send a thank you note, go ahead knowing that it will be opened, read and then thrown away. As for the second look. We have already made a preliminary vote on where you rank right after the interview. A second look is for you and you only. Don't think coming back for one day to "watch" what we do will change our minds. If you decide to do a month rotation with us and show us all your worth, that can change everything, but one night of you watching us won't.

I am not trying to be mean, but just stating how it really is. Be enthusiastic at the interview, tell us you enjoyed the interview and you think highly of us. Don't say stupid things such as EM being your back up, you weren't sure of this program before coming to interview, or that you collect Unicorns and My Little Ponies as your hobby.

 

[docvino]

I did a lot of interviewing for my residency 3 and 4 years ago. I can tell you now, no one cared about the thank you note. Once to twice a week we interviewed 10 or more people for 3 to 4 months. That's a lot of thank you notes that ended up in the trash. It made no difference in ranking and from everyone I talked to about the letters we received they put no weight into them.

If you want to send a thank you note, go ahead knowing that it will be opened, read and then thrown away. As for the second look. We have already made a preliminary vote on where you rank right after the interview. A second look is for you and you only. Don't think coming back for one day to "watch" what we do will change our minds. If you decide to do a month rotation with us and show us all your worth, that can change everything, but one night of you watching us won't.

I am not trying to be mean, but just stating how it really is. Be enthusiastic at the interview, tell us you enjoyed the interview and you think highly of us. Don't say stupid things such as EM being your back up, you weren't sure of this program before coming to interview, or that you collect Unicorns and My Little Ponies as your hobby.

thanks for your honest reply. this is actually what i was hoping to hear.