Applicants sometimes worry that if their CRS score rises after receiving an OINP Notification of Interest (and before IRCC processes their file), the increase — now higher than the maximum score in the OINP draw they were invited under — might look suspicious or cause an issue with IRCC.
What group members advised:- OINP and Express Entry (EE) are two separate, independently scored systems. A provincial nomination and your federal CRS score aren't evaluated against each other the way the question assumes.
- Once nominated, the nomination itself is what matters to IRCC — it adds a fixed 600 CRS points. OINP simply extracts your profile details from your EE profile at the time of nomination; your CRS score continuing to change afterward for reasons unrelated to the nomination isn't treated as a red flag.
The reassurance here: a CRS score that increases after your provincial nomination is not evidence of anything wrong — the nomination and the federal points system operate independently.