Main deadline dates

• 15 October deadline for applications to Oxford or Cambridge universities and for applications to medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine/science;

• 15 January the main deadline for all other applications, except art and design Route B (sequential);

• 24 March deadline for art and design Route B (sequential).

Completing an application

Applying for higher education courses has never been easier: all the information needed is available from this website, along with Apply, the online application system.

You may wish to use a parents' evening to check if your son's or daughter's school or college offers the opportunity to apply using a personal computer, if internet access is not available at home. The standard application fee is £15 for a maximum of six choices and £5 for a single choice.

Making choices

• A maximum of six choices is available. Some students make just one choice at a local university; others go for two different courses; far more students pick the same subject at six different places. Tip: making the right choices matters: they should only apply to places they want to go to. If they haven't used all their choices, they may be able to add another later, so long as they haven't accepted an offer elsewhere.

• With over 50,000 courses in the UCAS system, and each with a unique code, it is very important that your son or daughter puts time aside to double-check things like UCAS course and institution codes. Apply makes this easy because if they click on the course title, it will input the codes for them.

• The distance between the chosen university and your family home will affect you as well as your son or daughter.

Personal statement

• This is a crucial part of the application: when interviews are not held, tutors rely on the information given here when making their decision. It is your child's chance to tell the universities and colleges why they're applying, why they have chosen the course and why the institution should want them as a student. The personal statement is the only opportunity to personalise the application. It is very important that they take time to prepare this, so this is where your wider experience in form-filling could be invaluable to them.

Once they have completed the application and sent it to the school or college through which they are applying, their referee will write a reference and send the application to us. The payment method will depend on the school's or college's settings: they can choose that their students pay by credit or debit card before submitting the application or for the school or college to be invoiced by us, in which case payment for the application should be given to the school.

What happens next?

Your son or daughter will receive a Welcome letter (also known as an AS2 letter) from us to say that the application has been processed. This letter will include an individual application number, which should be kept handy in case your son or daughter needs to contact us, and a password enabling them to use Track. Popular with applicants, this is the quickest way to see if any colleges or universities have decided to make an offer, and it is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Invitations to interviews and open days will be sent direct to your son or daughter by universities and colleges.

Simultaneous consideration by choices

Once the application has been processed, we will send a copy to each of the choices stated on the application. The universities and colleges will then decide on an individual basis whether they wish to make an offer or not. Your son or daughter can decide which offers to accept once the chosen institutions have sent their decisions to us.

Route B

If applying for Route B art and design courses, the application process is slightly different, as we send applications to institutions in preference order. Applicants can apply for up to three places and they should indicate the order in which they would like their application to be sent. The preference order should be selected on Apply or via Track if the application has already been sent. We will send the application to the first choice institution. If your son or daughter is offered a place and has not applied to any Route A courses, they must decide whether to accept the offer, or decline it and move on to the next choice. If they are unsuccessful, their application will automatically be sent to their next choice. If they have applied to both Route A and Route B courses, they can choose to 'keep' a Route B offer, which will hold it until all Route A decisions have been received by us. They can then reply to offers.

Decisions, decisions

Offers from the institutions can be conditional or unconditional: if the offers made are conditional on obtaining certain grades or points, then two of these offers may be accepted. The 'firm' acceptance should be the place that your child wants to go to; the 'insurance' acceptance is a second choice should they not meet the requirements for their first choice. If they are made unconditional offers, they can accept only one, but an unconditional offer can act as a perfect insurance choice if the firm choice is conditional.
Tip: Your son or daughter should not accept an offer if they don't want to go there - it can be tricky trying to decline an offer once it has been accepted.

We do not expect a snap decision: your son or daughter will have at least four weeks to think about it.

Extra

If an applicant has used all their six choices and has no offers, Extra gives them the opportunity to have an additional choice through UCAS.

From the viewpoint of your son or daughter, this means that if they have the disappointment of not receiving any offers during the early part of the application cycle - for 10,000 plus students, a reality - then they do not have to wait until Clearing to continue looking for a place. Extra operates from mid-March to the end of June. Universities and colleges with vacancies will list them on the course search area of the website. Applicants who are eligible will be able to refer themselves electronically through Track for courses with vacancies. If unsuccessful, they can do it again (time permitting).

We hope that Extra will give additional motivation to all applicants who have not yet secured an offer and, as a result, will reduce the numbers needing to use Clearing.

Clearing

Clearing is available to applicants who have completed an application but have not managed to secure a place for the current year. Courses that have vacancies will be listed in The Independent newspaper and on the Clearing section of our website, from the day that A level results are published (usually the third Thursday in August). Your son or daughter can view the vacancies and contact institutions direct to discuss their options and suitability for the course. If they give their UCAS application number to the institution, the institution can then obtain a copy of their application from us for consideration. If accepted, the university or college will ask for their Clearing Entry Number, which is available on Track. We will then send confirmation of the place.

Checklist

To help ensure that your son's or daughter's UCAS application runs smoothly, here is a short list of things to do.

• Make sure they double-check all the information they include on the application before sending it to their referee.

• Advise them to read the Advice for Applicants leaflet, which they will receive with their Welcome letter.

• Inform us and institutions of any changes, e.g. to their examinations or postal address

• Make sure they reply to offers by the stated reply-by date.

• When confirmation of an offer comes from us (known as the AS12 letter), ensure your son or daughter uses the tear-off slip to confirm acceptance.

• You can now go out and celebrate a job well done!

Detailed information about making a UCAS application is available within Apply and the Apply information section on our website.