Alerts and Updates for CICC Entry-to-Practice Exam (Canada Immigration Consultants)

The exam is built around the College's Essential Competencies for RCIC Practice, with emphasis on the entry-level competencies that most affect public protection and ethical practice. The College does not publish a fixed percentage pass mark on the EPE information page, and identity documents must be accompanied by a completed Certification of ID form signed by a Guarantor, Referee or Authorized Person.

The College operates two separate gates per sitting: a Qualification Application that establishes eligibility, closing roughly five weeks before the exam, and a Registration Application that books the seat, closing about three weeks before. Result release dates are described by the College as approximate.

The mistake that costs candidates a full cycle is treating the EPE as a single registration event. It is two applications with two different deadlines, and the earlier one, the Qualification Application, is the one people miss. For the October 21, 2026 sitting that gate shut on September 16, 2026, more than five weeks before the exam. The second recurring error is letting the Graduate Diploma age past the three-year window.

For each sitting the College publishes three dates before the exam: the Qualification Application deadline, the Registration Application deadline about two weeks later, and the deferral request deadline a few days before the paper. For March 10, 2027 these are February 3, February 17 and March 5, 2027. Qualification is the substantive review, confirming the accredited Graduate Diploma, age and identity documentation, and it cannot be compressed. Registration is the narrower booking step. A candidate who submits everything only in mid-February 2027 will have missed qualification and be pushed to the following cycle, with a further wait before results. Treat the qualification deadline as the real deadline and the registration deadline as a formality you should already have cleared.

Eligibility requires completion of Queen's University's Graduate Diploma in Immigration and Citizenship Law or the Universite de Montreal D.E.S.S. en reglementation canadienne et quebecoise de l'immigration within three years of the intended EPE date. That is measured against the exam date, not the application date, so a diploma finished in early 2024 is already close to expiry for a 2027 sitting. Combined with the four-attempt cap, this means a candidate who defers repeatedly can run out of runway on the diploma before running out of attempts. Plan the first attempt early in the window so that any re-sits still fall inside it. The former Immigration Practitioner Program is no longer an accredited route.

The paper is 135 multiple-choice questions in three hours, closed book, delivered online. That is roughly 80 seconds per question, and the case-based items consume more than the independent ones, so the independent questions have to be answered fast to fund the cases. Because the exam is closed book, recall of statutory provisions, program criteria and procedural timelines has to be automatic; there is no scope to look anything up. Ten of the 135 items are unscored pilot questions scattered at random, so an unfamiliar or oddly worded question is not evidence that you have gone off track and should not be allowed to disturb pacing. Complete every item; there is no stated penalty for a wrong answer.

The published fee structure is 75 Canadian dollars for the EPE Application, 425 dollars for a first attempt and 325 dollars for each subsequent attempt, plus applicable Canadian taxes. The administrative penalties matter more than they look: a deferral costs 75 dollars and must be requested by the published deferral deadline, while simply not appearing costs 150 dollars. A candidate who books October 21, 2026, realises in early October that they are not ready, and does nothing, pays the no-show fee and burns an attempt slot in the process. Requesting the deferral by October 16, 2026 is the cheaper and safer route.

Results are released approximately seven weeks after each sitting: around December 9, 2026 for the October 21 paper and around April 28, 2027 for the March 10 paper. Licensing steps follow the result, not the exam, so a candidate sitting in October 2026 should not plan on holding an RCIC licence before the turn of the year, and one sitting in March 2027 should not count on practising before mid-2027. If an employer or a client file is waiting on licensure, add the post-result licence application and the New-Licensee Mentoring Program obligations to the timeline rather than assuming the exam date is the finish line.