Understanding Express Entry draws and cut offs

Now that you are applying to immigrate to Canada through Express Entry, you will be awarded points (known as CRS Score) based on your age, education, work experience and other factors. If you’ve got a high enough score to clear the cut-off, congratulations, you will be preferred over others and invited to apply at the next stage. Since there are only limited spots, you are effectively competing with all other candidates to get selected.

What are Express Entry draws

An Express Entry draw is like a lottery in which IRCC selects the candidates with the highest CRS scores from a pool of candidates available to them. This pool has candidates from all over the world with varying scores. Usually every couple of weeks, IRCC conducts a draw (also called Round of Invitations) to grab the top candidates in that pool and invites them to apply.

How do these draws work

Each draw has a cut off score defined by IRCC. Anyone above that score gets selected and while others remain in the pool and are considered for future draws. There is also a fixed number of applicants they select from each draw.

Both these numbers keep changing with every draw. For example, the next draw could have a cut off score of 472 with 5000 applicants selected while the one after that may have a cut off score of 461 with 6000 applicants selected. It is hard to predict the cut off scores but you can definitely check the historical cut off scores.

Unlike the lottery, Express Entry draws are not completely based on luck. People with merit (that is, higher scores) get selected sooner. However, since the cut off scores keep changing, some people are lucky to apply when the cut off scores are running low and they get selected very soon while some others have to wait for very long for the cut off scores to drop.

How are the number of applicants in a draw decided

The Government of Canada decides the number of immigrants they want to admit in the country each year. The responsibility to meet these immigration targets falls on IRCC. Based on these numbers, IRCC decides the number of Express Entry draws and number of selected candidates in each draw to meet the targets. If the government wants more people, the number of draws and the number of applicants in each draw will increase and vice versa.

How is the cut off score for a draw decided

The cut off scores get decided based on the number of applicants IRCC wants to select in that draw. For example, if they want to select 5000 applicants in this round, they will arrange all the candidates on the basis of their CRS score and see what’s the score of the 5000^th ranked candidate. Whatever that score is, it becomes the cut off score and all 5000 of those with that score or better proceed to the next round.

Why do cut off scores keep changing

If IRCC decides to select more applicants, let’s say 7000 in this round, they will have to look at the score of the 7000^th ranked applicant which will obviously be lower than that of the 5000^th ranked candidate. Naturally, the cut off score will drop in this case. Conversely, if they want to select only 3000 applicants in this round, they will look at the score of the 3000^th ranked candidate and the cut off score will creep up.

If the immigration targets set by the government change, the cut off scores will also change. The quality of new applicants entering the pool also affects the score. If suddenly a lot of people with very good education backgrounds start applying, the cut off scores will go up.

The duration between the draws also affects the score. Millions of people aspire to be a Canadian and therefore every day hundreds of people get added in the Express Entry pool. If IRCC takes a long time to conduct a draw, a lot more high scoring candidates will start piling up in the pool. The competition will get intense and the cut off score will increase.

Check this page for the latest cut off scores in the Express Entry draws.

Improving your score

There are several steps that you can take to improve your CRS score. You can work on one or more parameters until your score is high enough to get selected in a draw.

What happens to the applicants who don’t get selected

Those with low scores continue to remain in the Express Entry pool and they are considered for future draws while at the same time new applicants keep joining the pool every minute.

If your CRS score is 10-20 points lower than the last cut off score, you can hope to get selected in the coming months. However if your score is, let’s say, 40 points below the cut off, then you should think about improving your CRS score.