Single application for several postdoctoral positions I just finished crafting an application's cover letter for a particular lab (if it matters, area of research can be broadly classified as computational social sciences). The situation is that they have several postdoctoral positions and I feel that I am a pretty good fit for either one of them (how modest ;-).

However, I think that it makes absolutely no sense to send three separate cover letters for each of the positions, as 1) they are affiliated with the same lab (and, even, one of co-PIs is the same for all of them); 2) the positions share a lot of subject domain areas (I, actually, expressed this point directly in my cover letter - I hope it will not be considered offensive or otherwise inappropriate).

Therefore, my two related questions are:


Would it be appropriate to submit a single application with a single cover letter to those positions, based on my points above, even though they are advertised separately?
Is it acceptable that my cover letter (that single one) is almost two pages long (including all appropriate vertical spacing and 12pt font size - trying to be gentle with the readers' vision)?
I don't think you can assume that one application is okay.  I can certainly imagine situations where the lab would want a separate application for each position.  Maybe they are going to be reviewed by different people or committees.  Maybe they have complicated HR procedures that you don't know about.  Maybe when reviewing applications for position X, they want to see an application that specifically addresses your qualifications for that particular position, and doesn't mention other things that are only relevant to position Y.

So the safest course of action would simply be to ask.


  Dear Professor MMM,
  
  My name is NNN, and I am a graduate student at UUU, working with professor SSS.  I see that your lab has some postdoc positions open; I believe that I could be a good fit for any of the positions XXX, YYY, ZZZ.  (Briefly explain why.)  Would you prefer that I send a separate application for each position, or a single application addressing my qualifications for all three?


This could also get you other useful information, such as "I think you would be a better candidate for XXX; for the YYY postdoc we are specifically looking for someone with expertise in BBB."