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The Visa Tales

Provincial Nominee Program · 12 May 2025

Express Entry draw #346

On 12 May 2025, IRCC issued 511 invitations to apply in the Provincial Nominee Program. The lowest-ranked candidate invited scored 706 on the Comprehensive Ranking System, 21 points below the previous Provincial Nominee Program round 2 weeks earlier. That was the 9th lowest of the 22 Provincial Nominee Program rounds held in the year to that date, which together issued 20,073 invitations at cut-offs between 663 and 816. A Provincial Nominee Program cut-off includes the 600 points a provincial nomination is worth, so 706 here is roughly 106 before the nomination, and it cannot be compared with cut-offs in any other round.

Read and checked by Jay Sharma, Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant R710507, licensed by the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants. Round #346 is reproduced from IRCC's official rounds feed and has not been edited.

Minimum CRS score

706

Provincial Nominee Program

Previous Provincial Nominee Program round: #343 on 28 Apr 2025 at 727 (-21)

Invitations
511
Round
#346
Date
12 May 2025
Tie-break
4 Mar 2025

Programs eligible

Provincial Nominee Program

Candidates tied on 706 were separated by how long they had been in the pool. The tie-break was set at March 04, 2025 at 22:35:42 UTC. A profile submitted before that moment was invited, one submitted after it was not.

The pool that week

The pool behind this round

IRCC published the pool’s shape alongside this round: 249,969 candidates on May 12, 2025. No cut-off line is drawn across it, and that is deliberate, because a Provincial Nominee Program score is not on the same scale as the rest of the pool. The reason is below the table.
Express Entry candidates by CRS range on May 12, 2025, against the 706 cut-off of round #346
CRS rangeCandidatesShare of pool
601–12005130.2%
501–60022,3168.9%
491–50012,3995.0%
481–49012,6635.1%
471–48016,6126.6%
461–47016,6636.7%
451–46015,2456.1%
441–45014,4015.8%
431–44015,2006.1%
421–43013,6755.5%
411–42013,5525.4%
401–41012,6395.1%
351–40053,59821.4%
301–35022,0518.8%
0–3008,4423.4%

Why there is no line on this table. A provincial nomination is worth 600 CRS points, so the 706 cut-off in this round belongs to a candidate scoring about 106 without it. The pool above counts everyone at their base score, so draw a line at 706 and it would report that not one of 249,969 candidates qualified, on a day IRCC invited 511 of them.

Only candidates already holding a nomination could be invited in this round, and the published pool does not identify them. The distribution is still worth seeing, because it is the field this round was drawn from, but its scale and this cut-off are not the same scale.

In context

Provincial Nominee Program rounds in the year to 12 May 2025

A cut-off means little on its own. Against its own category’s previous twelve months, this one was the 9th lowest of 22.
706
Lowest cut-off
663
Highest cut-off
816
Rounds
22
Invitations
20,073

Common questions

Round #346, answered

Two questions this round gets asked, answered from IRCC’s own figures for it.

What was the CRS cut-off for Express Entry draw #346?

The cut-off for round #346, held on 12 May 2025, was 706. It was a Provincial Nominee Program round and it issued 511 invitations to apply, 21 points below the previous Provincial Nominee Program round 2 weeks earlier. Candidates who tied at 706 were ranked by the date they entered the pool, with the cut-off timestamp set at March 04, 2025 at 22:35:42 UTC, which means somebody sitting on exactly that score who submitted their profile after that moment was not invited. That tie-break is the part of a round most people never see, and it is the reason two candidates with identical scores can get different answers on the same day. It is also the argument for submitting a profile as soon as it is genuinely ready, since the ordering it creates costs nothing to be early in. The full record of this round, including the pool as IRCC published it that week, is set out on the rest of this page.

Why can't the draw #346 cut-off be compared with the Express Entry pool?

Because a provincial nomination is worth 600 CRS points, and that puts this round on a different scale from the published pool. The 706 cut-off here belongs to a candidate whose score without the nomination was roughly 106. IRCC publishes the pool at base scores, before any nomination is added, so placing 706 on that distribution would suggest nobody in the pool qualified, on a day the department invited 511 people. The comparison is not close to right, it is meaningless. Only candidates already holding a nomination were eligible for this round at all, and the published pool does not identify who they are. So a provincial round tells you about the nominated population rather than about the pool, and the two cannot be read against each other. The pool chart on this page is shown for context rather than for comparison.

Free CRS assessment

Would this round have taken you?

The table above is the pool this round was drawn from. Whether your own score reaches a category, and what would move it, whether a language retake, a provincial nomination or a spouse’s credentials, is a different question, and it is the one worth answering.

Data: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Round #346, 12 May 2025; pool as published on May 12, 2025.

Three fields · about 30 seconds

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