Is sending email a performance hog with app server?

Hello all,

Our recruiters are emailing rejection letters to 100s of applicants on a job opening, and sometimes their PeopleSoft session expires. After doing a trace I discovered that the statement GetSession PT_MCF_MAIL.MCFOutboundEmail.OnExecute is averaging .87 seconds per applicant (which explains why their session is timing out). My question is:

Is this amount of time acceptable? Or do we possibly have a performance issue? All other processing goes very fast. Our timeout parameter for the app server is set to 300 seconds, which I understand is the default. Do we simply need to increase the time?

Thanks in advance for any help,