Unofficially accepting an unofficial offer

[geographyrocks]

Question time!

 

Would you unofficially accept an unofficial offer?  lol  It sounds confusing, but I was offered admission by my POI in early Feb.  A week later (or less) I received the department notification of my offer.  Since then (over a month) I have been patiently waiting for the official graduate school offer which would include the concrete stipend amount and maybe other financial offers.  I've been communicating with the admissions chair of the department and he just asked if he could "record for the time being that you will accept our offer (pending the official letter)" because the official grad school letters won't be out for another week or longer.  Something about the graduate school getting a new system and being backlogged.  Anyway, should I tell him yes or wait for the official letter to accept?  I don't think there is any harm in "unofficially" accepting since I will definitely be going and funding is guaranteed, but I overlook things sometimes. 

 

Thanks in advance!

[TakeruK]

If you know for sure you will attend that school, then you should tell the department the decision so that they can make whatever plans necessary based on this. You'll have to officially accept the official grad school offer eventually though. 

 

Since you are "unofficially" accepting their unofficially offer, if the real offer is not what they made it sound like (i.e. not actually the funding level they had talked about before), then 1) you haven't officially accepted, so declining officially would be easy and 2) people should understand that if they significantly change their unofficial offer, you can't be expected to take it.

 

I would say that while you do this, you should not decline any other offers though, until you have officially accepted the official offer from this school, just in case something changes! 

[PhDerp]

...Reading those two posts was the most confusing thing in the world. @_@