Received verbal acceptance, but waiting on offer letter.

[Gradschoolnewb]

I received a phone call two days ago with a verbal acceptance to one of the schools that I applied. I was told I would be receiving an offer letter in the next few days. It is now the weekend and I have not received my offer letter. At what point should I be concerned that they may have decided to rescind their offer? I'm extremely anxious because this is a excellent school and I'm worried they might have changed their mind.

[2017 Applicant]

You shouldn't be worried at all. First of all, I'd consider Monday or Tuesday to be within the realm of "a few days" from Thursday.

Secondly, it would not reflect very well on the program's ability to choose good students if they accepted you and then decided that they actually wanted to rescind your offer within a couple of days. For that to happen, it seems like there would need to be a major blemish on your application that was fairly well-hidden. And even then I think they would probably contact you about it as soon as they found out. Unless you know of anything like that in your application, you really shouldn't worry. You've been accepted.

[ThousandsHardships]

When a program says they've accepted you, it means that they've accepted you at the program/departmental level and forwarded your name to the university to make the official offer. Of course, the department usually also does send out an informal offer letter in writing, but that's less important.

As far as the official offer goes...the university/graduate school usually accepts all students nominated by the individual programs. The only exception is if they don't meet certain general requirements. For example, if the school requires a 3.0 GPA but yours is lower, if for some reason you didn't actually receive the degree you said you did, or if you don't have all the application materials requested, then the graduate school can veto the department's nomination. But for applicants who do meet the basic requirements, this is rarely if ever an issue.

Four years ago, when I did my first round of PhD applications, I received my unofficial offer on February 8th and my official offer on February 20th. This time around (I dropped out of my last program), I got an email announcing my acceptance on January 30th, got my unofficial offer letter on February 3rd, and I still haven't received the official offer. Typically, 1-3 weeks is the normal waiting period between the unofficial and official acceptances.

Edited February 28, 2017 by ThousandsHardships