Handwritten vs Typed thank you notes after residency interviews

Should you send a handwritten or a typed post residency interview thank you letter? This question being asked by thousands of doctors every year. Before we go further in elaborating why handwritten notes are way more effective than the typed ones, let me tell you about a big "No" which is emailing the programs. In the busy season, most emails that programs receive from outside their network goes to spam because every program will be overwhelmed by these letters and hence the system will start to filter them out. Nevertheless, you will need your email address to stay on the good side rather on the bad side for possible future communications especially if you matched and need some urgent assistance with relocating or other stuff. Bottom line Don't email thank you letters.

A handwritten post-residency interview note on a well-designed thank you card is a nice gesture to show your appreciation to the program director and interest towards the training program. It will make your name more familiar to the people who were involved in your interview including the director, coordinator, faculty and chief residents. So when their selection committee meets and your name is presented, everybody will feel comfortable picking you up.

In contrast, typed letters looks very plain and lack the personal effect the handwritten ones do. Usually it give the impression that the writer is trying t hide his/her bad handwriting. It also give the impression that the applicant is copy-pasting the same note to all programs.

Also there is some psychological effect of the handwritten letters which you should never underestimate. This is resembled by at least two factors: the exchanged effort and the presence effect. The exchanged effort is when you put an effort on writing something and send it, the recipient will sense it as a positive karma coming to him/her and will draw a smile on his/her face. Your name will be connected to certain events in their brain and make it familiar and will be associated with a source of comfort. The presence effect is that the card will set in his/her office for a while before it is turned away. So every time your name there is eyeballed, a new brain impression is created. Until the day of the NRMP ROL submission comes, and while they are flipping the names up in the ladder, your name will definitely be more familiar to them and they will rank you higher.

There are different designs for thank you card. It doesn't matter much which to choose, but it will be more impressive if you get something cool like this best seller one: Thank you card!