Checking that an offer letter is genuine

Why this is worth an hour

A forged or misleading offer letter costs a student two things at once: the money paid against it, and the cycle lost while it unravels. Worse, presenting a false document to a consulate is treated as fraud by the applicant, whoever produced it. The consulate does not investigate who typed it.

None of the checks below require an agent, a fee or a phone call abroad. All of them can be done from a laptop in Dhaka.

The six checks

1. The register, country by country

Every one of the nine countries maintains an official list of recognised higher education providers. If an institution is not on its own country's list, nothing else about the letter matters.

• Italy — the Ministry's list, reachable through Universitaly and the Study in Italy portal
• Cyprus — the Cyprus Agency of Quality Assurance in Higher Education
• Hungary — the Hungarian Educational Authority
• Malta — the Malta Further and Higher Education Authority's register of licensed providers
• Finland — Studyinfo, which lists the institutions and their programmes
• Sweden — the central admissions system and the Council for Higher Education
• Denmark — the official study-in-Denmark and accreditation listings
• Greece — the Ministry of Education
• Bulgaria — the Ministry of Education and NACID

⚠️ For Cyprus specifically, check which Cyprus. Institutions in the northern part of the island are not registered under the Republic of Cyprus, are not in the EU higher education framework in the same way, and their qualifications are recognised differently. An offer that mentions Cyprus without saying which side is a question you must answer before you pay anything.

2. The programme, not just the university

A real university can appear on a fake letter. Open the university's own course catalogue and find the exact programme. Compare four things against the letter: the official title, the degree awarded, the duration, and the credit total. A mismatch in any of them is worth an email.

Also check the tuition figure in the letter against the university's published fees page. An offer quoting a fee the university does not publish is a strong signal.

3. The portal beats the PDF

This is the most decisive check and the one most often skipped. Almost every European university runs an applicant portal. Log in with your own credentials and confirm that the offer, the student or application number, and the conditions are all visible there.

If the only evidence of your admission is a PDF that someone sent you, you do not have evidence of your admission. If someone else created and controls the account, get it transferred to your own email before doing anything else.

4. The domain

Read the sender's address character by character. Fraudulent domains work by looking almost right — an added word, a hyphen, a different top-level domain, a lookalike letter. Compare it to the domain in the address bar when you visit the university through a search engine, not through a link in the letter.

The same applies to the website in the letter's footer. Never navigate from the document you are trying to verify.

5. Talk to admissions yourself

Find the admissions contact on the university's own site and write to them with your application number and a one-line question: can you confirm this offer is on file for me? Universities answer this routinely. Keep the reply.

6. The payment instruction

This is where fraud reveals itself, because money has to go somewhere.

Normal: a bank account in the university's registered name, in the university's own country, with an IBAN and SWIFT code that match, and a reference format tied to your application number. Some countries additionally require the first instalment before a residence permit application — Sweden and Denmark commonly do.

Not normal, at all: an account in a person's name, an account in a third country unrelated to the university, a request for payment in cash or through an informal transfer channel, an "agent's collection account", or pressure to pay within days to hold a seat. Any of these means stop.

Legitimate ways to send tuition from Bangladesh are covered in sending tuition from Bangladesh and paying application fees.

Genuine is not the same as good

A letter can pass all six checks and still be a poor decision. A registered private institution with low entry requirements, high fees and no research profile issues perfectly genuine offers. Ask separately whether the qualification is worth what it costs, and check whether the field is regulated: a European degree in nursing, pharmacy, architecture, law or teaching is not by itself a licence to practise, either in Europe or on return to Bangladesh.

More on the surrounding risk in fake documents and agency fraud.

What to do next

1. 1Run checks one to four tonight. They take under an hour and cost nothing.
2. 2Email admissions and wait for the reply before transferring money.
3. 3Screenshot the portal page showing your offer, and keep it with the file.
4. 4If anything fails, do not argue with whoever gave you the letter. Ask us or the university directly — get in touch.