No "Thank You" notes/e-mails?

Parents Forum
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<p>All my kids are in college, so for the first time, I have begun meeting with local high school seniors who applied to my Ivy alma mater. These are not official "interviews" but are intended to be student "information sessions," although we do provide a brief paragraph to the admissions office describing our impression of each student. It is an opportunity for the applicant to add a personal aspect to his/her application; but mostly we are there to put a friendly face on the college, answer questions, and try to give a favorable impression of the university.</p>

<p>This year I met individually with ten students, 7 of whom are from my own children's high school; a couple of them I knew previously due to my own kids' involvement in various school activities, but not to a great extent, except one who is the child of long-time family friends. In most cases, it took a lot of effort on my part to get responses to my initial contact e-mail(s) or phone calls. (When I mistakenly wrote "[Ivy] interview" in the subject line of the first two e-mails, the responses were pretty rapid, though)!</p>

<p>Eventually, I did meet with all 10 of my assigned students. In every case, we talked for about an hour, touched on a variety of subjects, and I tried really hard to make the applicant feel relaxed and open. (I think I am a pretty friendly and non-intimidating person)! Of course, after the meeting, all of them thanked me geniuinely and most mentioned how much they appreciated how relaxed and informative our talk had been.</p>

<p>I wrote my short descriptions and submitted them to admissions within hours of the meetings, so it is not as if I am influenced by receiving written thank-you e-mails. However, I have to admit that I am pretty surprised that out of my 10 assigned applicants, I received a thank you e-mail from exactly..... zero of them.</p>

<p>My kids all had various forms of interviews/casual meetings/alumni contacts/individual info sessions.... during their college search and application process. It would never have occurred to me to NOT have them send a quick one or two sentence personal note or thank you e-mail, showing appreciation to the alum or interviewer for taking the time to meet with them and reaffirming their interest in the university. It certainly cannot HURT to do so, and these applicants do know that I am submitting something to admissions, so I am wondering, parents, where do you come out on this? Would there be a reason to advise your kids NOT to send a thank you e-mail?</p>

<p>Admittedly, I have always been a real stickler about thank you notes, from the time my kids were little. Even before they could write I would have them draw a "picture" of the gift received and send it the old-fashioned way (stamp and USPS), even to their little school friends. So I do recognize that I may be perhaps a little more anal about this sort of thing than others. But, it IS time consuming to meet with these kids when one works full time, and of course I do it because I enjoy it and not because I have expectations of their undying gratitude (!), but I am just mostly surprised by what seems to be a common (non) practice.</p>

<p>Are there others out there who are doing these admission talks on behalf of your alma mater who think it's brown-nosing or something to receive thank you notes or e-mails? I do know that these kids are super-busy and are probably drained from the whole application process, so I'm trying to keep an open mind, and I realize that I may be kind of over-the-top in my expectations in this regard, but I am still surprised.</p>

<p>Any thoughts?</p>

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<p>I am also surprised. Both my DDs always sent a thank you note/email to each interviewer, even the schools they decided they were not interested in after the interview. I assumed most of their classmates did the same.</p>

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<p>My D would’ve sent a written thanks note through the mail but none of her 5 alumni interviewers gave her any address or a business card to make it easier to do that. Seems weird to request a mailing address while explaining it’s for the purpose of sending a thank you note. So she did make sure to email them all after the interviews and thanked them again for their time. One of her interviews lasted 2 hours and another one was 3 hours long so those interviewers really were giving a lot of of personal time to her. </p>

<p>All responded to her email and thanked D for meeting with them, wished her luck with admissions, and said nice things about her. One interviewer (the 3 hour one) followed up by sending D an article about a new program at the college that interviewer had told D about when they meet. When she told her last interviewer that she was accepted at that person’s college, the woman was very excited for her and promised to contact D again soon. Not sure why though. haha</p>

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<p>Funny, you should ask. Just sat down my daughter to send off some thank yous to people she met at a school two weeks ago, and I thought we were being bad about it.</p>

<p>If your kids had bar mitzvahs or the functional equivalent, then you might have had the fun of getting a thirteen-year-old to send out scores of thanks. There’s a little cottage industry of preprinted thank you notes. All you have to do is sign.</p>

<p>That said, snail mail is prehistoric. When one of my kids addresses an envelope, and these are bright kids, I have to answer questions like, How do I write the address? What do I put in front of her name?</p>

<p>And email is, well, so 20th century.</p>

<p>I wonder what results you would get if you gave them your cell phone number or put it on your business card for texting.</p>

<p>I get the sense that the teen/young adults of today do very little emailing amongst themselves. It’s all via texts. And in the moment.</p>

<p>Maybe, in their minds, a profuse thank you in the moment meets the standards of Emily Post’s granddaughter.</p>

<p>How about social media? Recently, I asked one of my kids to contact someone and it was all done through FaceBook.</p>

<p>Our grandchildren will be complaining far into the future. “I interviewed 10 applicants and zero mind-melded me a thanks.”</p>

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<p>My kids sent handwritten TYN the day of each interview. This has been discussed before on CC and if I recall correctly, most kids don’t send them.</p>

<p>The kids who know to send them are the ones who get the good jobs after college and all the good things before they graduate.</p>

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<p>My kids sent thank you notes after each interview. They also send thank you notes when they get gifts from grandma, aunts & uncles, etc. Sometimes by snail mail, sometimes emailed. It’s expected in this house.</p>

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<p>That’s awfully presumptuous parent1986, do you have anything to back up the job statement?</p>

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<p>I don’t know if it really impacts getting into a school or getting a job, but even if it doesn’t benefit the sender in any real way, thanking someone for taking time out of their day to do an interview just seems like the right thing to do. I’m surprised that the OP received NO thank you notes.</p>

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<p>I am rather surprised to hear that your alma mater would ask you to participate in interviews of students you know, and who know you. I would think that prior familiarity would make it difficult to give an objective assessment.</p>

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<p>Ithacakid, email TYN are also acceptable.</p>

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<p>I’m a high school senior, and while I really don’t email my friends (you can have attachments on facebook messages!), most people I know, including me, can reply to interviewer’s emails quickly. A lot of people also have smart phones so they can keep up on those as well. </p>

<p>I usually send a thank-you note a few days later, so its a reminder of who I was as well.</p>

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<p>The day before my first college interview this year, my mother took me to Staples where I bought a nice set of 15 cards and envelopes. After every interview or similar meeting, I’ve sat down within a few days and written and mailed off the note. If the person took the time to meet with me (and so far they’ve all been very nice), then I should take a few minutes to thank them for it. One of them sent me a very nice email afterwards thanking me for the note. @OP, I can’t imagine not sending anything. I’d suggest you kindly let the kids know (the ones from your kids’ school that you would see) that in the future, they should send some sort of thank you recognition to any interviewer or person they meet with. It would be a big help to them because they may be unaware of it. You probably don’t want to make them feel embarrassed about it, because it seems they truly didn’t know to do it, but just tell them you understand why they didn’t send you one but wish to inform them for the future.</p>

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<p>These are probably the same people who don’t rsvp for birthday parties and weddings. </p>

<p>My son had 3 interviews, sent 3 thank you notes. One through snail mail, the other two emails. Granted I had to remind him to do it. I even emailed one of them who was a family friend thanking them for taking their time.</p>

<p>My sweeping general statement is how ungrateful a society we seem to becoming.</p>

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<p>My D sent hand written thank you notes to interviewers, faculty, and coaches that she met with during coilege visits.</p>

<p>She received several local scholarships at graduation. She sent hand written thank you notes withn a week after graduation. One of the scholarships was from a high school parent’s group that I am heavily involved with (but not on the scholarship committee). Four scholarships, worth $750 each, were given out. Only 3 of the recipients sent thank you notes, even though the letter specifically stated “Please send a thank you note to:XYZ…”</p>

15

<p>I plead guilty to this one. My kid did NOT send any thank you notes after alum interviews. None of my kid’s classmates did. My kid decided it would be overdoing it since no one did. For some reason, they all sent thank you emails after on-campus interviews.</p>

<p>This is so timely. I was about to ask here if it’s the new norm.</p>

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<p>hmm, interesting, OP here. I certainly understand not receiving a handwritten note, and wouldn’t expect that for this kind of “interview.” (If they really wanted to, they could track my address down the old phone book way but that is probably going above and beyond)! I hadn’t thought about e-mail being old-fashioned though, especially since our initial contacts were all via e-mail. But you might be right latichever; my own kids are all about texting. My own D asked me last week how many stamps she needed to send a standard letter… :slight_smile: OMG, my brilliant D - sign of the times!! Still, I am surprised.</p>

<p>@skyhook - I think the premise is that this isn’t supposed to be an “interview” - more an informational session and casual “put a face to the application.” I don’t think my assessment really counts for much; maybe if admissions committee is really torn about a candidate they might consider what I wrote. I guess they feel that prior knowledge of an applicant can only help to promote the college as well as the student.</p>

<p>gsmomma - I really can’t imagine not sending a thank-you note for scholarships, wow.</p>

<p>Sorry if this is a repeat thread, but it’s timely anyway!</p>

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<p>My kids DO send thank you notes. BUT I’m not sure I agree with the correlation between sending thank you notes and good jobs/good things before they graduate.</p>

<p>Re: the types of thank you format? I asked my 20 something kids and they said it would depend on the recipient. They would send a snail thank you to their grandparents or anyone of their generation or to some of ours (parents). They would send an email thank you to some of the parents’ generation but it would depend on the reason for the Thank you. They would send emails in less formal situations to their own generation for many purposes. They would send a text message to thank a friend for a fun visit or night out…that sort of thing.</p>

<p>In the case of an interview…both said they would send BOTH an email AND a snail mail to the person who did the interview. If they did NOT have the person’s snail address, they would send email only.</p>

<p>I asked them if email was “so 2000” and they both said it was current.</p>

<p>OH…and for certain things…think wedding gifts, shower gifts, birthday gifts…etc. a written thank you is what they both say they do (and one of them lives in Africa where the mail is costly and takes a long time).</p>

<p>I guess my kids should have great jobs!!</p>

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<p>Now I am getting worried. The only one here with a kid not writing a thank you. But maybe CC is a select group of A type. It wouldn’t surprise me if they get good jobs.</p>

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<p>I’ve been doing alumni interviews for 25+ years, interviewing anywhere from 3 to 7 per year, and I’ve gotten less than 5 thank-yous in all that time. Interviewed 3 so far this year, and no thank-you notes or emails. I don’t expect thank yous and couldn’t care less whether I get one.</p>

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<p>Maybe some of the reason for less thank you notes from folks here is that kids are interviewing with a dozen folks or more. My kids didn’t apply to very many schools each.</p>