New Admits and Transfers: Activating and Accessing your ACS Email Account

Please read the whole page before proceeding - it will give you all the information you need to activate and access your new official UCSD Email account. Yes, there will be a test.

As a new undergraduate freshman or transfer student, once you have accepted admission to UCSD (completed your SIR, or Statement of Intent to Register), an ACS email account is created for you. The first large batch of accounts is created after the original new admit SIR deadline (early May for Fall admits). After the initial deadline, additional SIRs (transfers, late accepts) are processed every few days to create additional accounts for those students.

To access your email account, you need to activate it by using your existing TritonLink password to confirm your identity and set your email password. IF your TritonLink password is of high enough quality (sufficiently complex, doesn't included parts of your own name etc.), you can use the same password — but you still have to re-enter it.

Find your username and mail server

Your username is a login name based on your real name, it is not your Student ID (PID) or your MyApplication ID. For example if your name was John Smith, your username might be something like "jsmith" or "jrs011". If you don't know your username you can find it using the Account Lookup tool. The lookup tool will also identify your ACS email server (the name of the computer your email is delivered to), which you will need to read your mail.

(Re)set your password to activate your email

Once you know your username, you can set your ACS password. The account lookup tool page will offer you a link to do that, or you can go directly to the password change page. But keep reading...

IMPORTANT: The password change page has several methods for you to confirm your identity and then set your ACS email password. The first and most common for new admits is to use your existing TritonLink/Myapplication password. If your existing password does not work for your ACS password reset, but it DOES work for TritonLink, scroll further down the password change page to the link that says "Change Password Using a password that only seems to work in TritonLink" - that link will authenticate you through TritonLink, then allow you to set or reset the password for your ACS email account. (You'll also be directly presented with that same "only works in Tritonlink" option if your regular change fails).

As noted above, IF your password is good enough, you can use the same password you are already using...but you still have to enter it to activate your email account, as though you were changing it. The password change screen will give you detailed feedback in the event we need you to change your password to improve it or make it compatible across all systems.

Wait for password change to take effect

Pay attention to the confirmation screen for your password change - it will tell you when the password will work to access your email account (usually 30 minutes or less, but not immediately.)

If for some reason even the "Change using a password that only works in TritonLink" fails (should be very, very rare), you may need to create a totally new TritonLink password. This will require answering your personal security question correctly.

Again, such a full reset should be very, very rare, but if you do that, the update WILL also change your ACS password - you don't have to go back to the ACS password change page, but you do have to wait up to 30 minutes for the password to take effect on your email server.

Log in to your email account

Once you know your account name, mail server, have activated your account by successfully running the ACS global password change to re-set your email password, you can read your official UCSD email using ACS-Webmail (http://acs-webmail.ucsd.edu).

Summary

Email Verification for Communication with your College

If your college requires email account verification, a confirmation code will be sent to your new UCSD email address, with instructions. If you are unable to find a message from your college, please contact your college's Academic Advising Office.

For additional help, please contact the ACS Help Desk directly at acs-help@ucsd.edu, or 858-534-3227.