What does it mean when a school asks for a missing GRE score that I submitted? I am getting very anxious about being rejected from a PhD program in US school. I was told today that they did not receive my GRE score, which I definitely sent in.  I immediately replied back and sent the score back to them.

My question is:

Are they asking for my missing score because they are actually considering me as a potential candidate?

I know that the question is very silly and self-serving but I am so curious what you guys think because I have been losing sleep over this little thing.
We can't really answer whether the school you sent is specifically considering you, but there are three main things that could cause them to ask for the score (regardless of how/why they said they don't have it). The key is to understand that graduate admissions (at least in the US) is a compound process involving the department and the graduate school.

In order of least encouraging to most encouraging (for your prospects):


The graduate school may have either a policy that they only pass on complete records and viewed yours as incomplete or the graduate school wants complete records for all applicants for book-keeping.
The department did not have the data and wants it before it begins evaluating applications at all. Good side = this would mean the department is looking at it. Bad side = some departments in some fields use a cut-off based on GRE scores to lop off the most unlikely candidates (obviously with exceptions mutatis mutandis)
The department and/or graduate school is making selections and needs to complete files before sending out offers. Slightly less positively maybe they need this as a tie-breaker to figure out the last candidate.


Obviously three would be great, but often the reasons for these queries are much more mundane.