Letterhead in application letters for tenure-track in computer science in USA? I'm a postdoc in computer science preparing an application for a tenure-track full-time faculty position in a US university. The opinions on whether to use a letterhead or not vary: Postdoc using current university&#39;s letterhead for job application cover letter (academic/national lab jobs)?, Should I use my university&#39;s letterhead for a cover letter for a job application?, Letterhead ethics, The Professor Is In: Why Letterhead Matters.

Which choice is prevalent or advisable for the position in question: with or without letterhead?
I've served for 15 years on my (top-5 US computer science) department's faculty recruiting committee, including three as committee chair.

At least in my department, whether your cover letter uses letterhead  Does. Not. Matter. Really.  The hiring committee is looking at the information in your application; formatting is at best a secondary concern.  Most committee members will never even read your cover letter, because all the relevant information is repeated elsewhere: In your CV, your research and teaching statements, your web page, your DBLP profile, your Google Scholar profile, and especially your recommendation letters.  I did read cover letters as committee chair, but only because that made it slightly easier to classify applications into our target research areas.

As a sanity check, I just went through a random sample of the candidates that my committee rated highly in last year's faculty search.  About half of their cover letters were on institutional letterhead.