3ds Max & VRay- trying to apply mesh light to multiple polys at once

Hello all.

I apologize if this isn't the right place to post this, but it's driving me crazy. Hopefully someone can help.

I've been trying to attach a mesh light to several editable poly cylinders at the same time. I have over 100 fluorescent light bulbs in my model that I'd like to make mesh lights out of, but I don't want to do each one individually. As of now, the only way I know to make a mesh light is to select the mesh light, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the modifier tab and click "Pick Mesh", which won't allow me to select multiple items at once.

Here's what I've tried:
Grouping the "bulbs" (won't let me)
Linking the "bulbs" together (messed everything up)
Selecting all of the polys and clicking the mesh light button (worked, but created over 100 individual lights, which crashed the Light Lister every time I opened it)
And a few other things

Ideally, I'd like to make one poly a light with the Vray mesh light and then convert every other bulb to be an instance of that first one so I end up with only one parameter listing in the Light Lister dialogue that controls all of the fluorescent bulbs.

Hope that makes sense. Thanks in advance!