Most people intending to apply to universities in the United Kingdom will probably know all about the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). According to UCAS itself, it is the central organisation that processes applications for full-time undergraduate courses at UK universities and colleges.

This year, UCAS has withdrawn paper applications for UK universities and has made online applications - through UCAS Apply - compulsory. This indeed has improved the already simple application procedure for UK universities (if compared to the long application forms American universities require).

Many applicants however do not bother using UCAS Track, which enables applicants to track the progress of their applications, receive conditional and unconditional offers by the universities and reply to those offers - all through a simple web interface.

All you need is your UCAS Apply username, password and UCAS Track ID - which is provided when you submit your complete UCAS application (through mail and the UCAS Apply interface itself).

UCAS Track will indicate that you have received a conditional offer by putting Conditional under the Decision column. If the universities have not replied, the Decision column will show Sent.

Note: For universities like Cambridge and Oxford, which utilise the Winter Pool system, UCAS Track will not reflect your Pool status. If you are Pooled, UCAS Track will still indicate that an offer has not been received (rather than indicate that you are Pooled). You will have to wait until the final result (at the end of the Winter Pool) is announced.

So, for the miniority who have not, start using UCAS Track rather than emailing and calling the universities when offer (or rejection) letters do not arrive.