<p>So, after my interview today, I jotted down some quick notes about what my interviewer and I talked about. How should I go about writing a great thank you note? How do I incorporate little reminders about what we talked about into the note without sounding stupid? How should I reaffirm my qualifications and interest in the schools? Should I email the letter or snail-mail it?</p>
<p>Thanks for your help, guys.</p>
<p>BDM might be able to give a little different insight, but at the two places I interviewed, they (the admissions reps/deans) explicitly told us NOT to send thank yous b/c the interviewers would be turning in their notes later that day. At one of my schools the interviewer was not present during discussions on acceptance, and the other school said they wouldn't deliver thank yous to interviewers if they were on the admissions committee (this school did include interviewers on the admissions discussion, but removed their addresses from any searchable source, so you had to send thank yous to the admissions office - so we were told).</p>
<p>If you do send a thank you, it should be by regular mail. You can include things about what you talked about, but it should be first and foremost in my opinion a thank you, so you should express thanks for what information they were able to give you about the school not thank them for listening to you talk about yourself. I think it's tacky to put mention of your qualifications. As for interest, I'm not really sure...mainly b/c they know you're interested otherwise you wouldn't have interviewed there. Unless they really are your number one choice far and away and you have concrete specific reasons for them being so far ahead.</p>
<p>I think the thank you's likely won't do much for your acceptance to medical school b/c the programs have all the power - they'll fill their class no matter what. This is different than when applying to residencies in which they can make a difference and stating interest can be important in fields where not all the spots are filled every year. But this is, at this point, merely a tangent.</p>
<p>Again, BDM may have a different tune b/c he applied to and interviewed a a lot more schools including privates, while I only interviewed at two state schools.</p>
<p>I agree with BRM. Send a thank you note if you were raised that way but don't expect it to sway the interviewers in anyway and it's certainly not a chance to remind the interviewer of all your qualifications again. The dean of admissions at Weill Medical School (Cornell) specifically said he doesn't care if you send him a thank you note.</p>
<p>Ah, okay. Perhaps it shouldn't be more than a paragraph long, then. The pre-med advising at my school was very gung-ho about thank you notes, so I'm glad to get some other perspectives.</p>
<p>I think it's a moderately important thing to do, except at some schools which explicitly warn you that it is inappropriate to do so (UCSF is the only one that comes to mind).</p>
<p>I don't think it's all that important for the admissions process, but I do think it's nice to do and might help. The absence of one might indicate disinterest or impoliteness.</p>
<p>It should simply be a thank you note. Don't discuss yourself.</p>
<p>What I did - and I question the wisdom of this, but in the interest of laying all my cards on the table - was write a thank you note to the admissions office which expressed my gratitude for their work, my interest in their school with specific reasons, and ask them to pass those thanks along to my interviewer. This may have come across as tacky and exploiting the thank-you-note process to continue to express my interest, which... it was. At least, however, I did not ever mention my own qualifications again. I think that's quite important.</p>
<p>Now. Thank you notes are not especially crucial, but I think communication with the school in general is extremely important. Every couple of months - especially after May 15 - write them a letter to continue to express your interest. Point to specific, perhaps personal reasons. This letter should be no more than a page unless you're writing to Columbia, in which case you should write literally as much as you can - I have a length close to 9 or 10 pages in mind.</p>
<p>But these are for much later. For now, I think a short tasteful thank-you note may only be polite.</p>
<p>One more thought. Even if it's totally unimportant, you always want to stay on the good side of your premed advisors. Do what they tell you.</p>