Two things have to be done by 1 February at 5pm. Most students do the first. A steady number miss the second every year, and it costs them courses that were available to them in November.
One: register. Create the application, pay the fee.
Two: get your course choices in. An application with an empty list is a valid application. It is also an application that has not asked for anything.
Why the second one bites
Restricted courses. Anything with an interview, an audition, a portfolio or a suitability test cannot be added after 1 February at any price, because the assessment has to be scheduled. Medicine, some art and design programmes, some teacher training, and mature applications sit here.
Late application in March gets you into the system. It does not get you a restricted course. That door closed at 5pm on 1 February and does not reopen.
So a student who registered in January, meant to think about their list over midterm, and added courses in March, has quietly lost every restricted option for the year without ever being told no.
The fix takes ten minutes
Put your list in before 1 February even if you are not sure. Especially if you are not sure.
Every choice can be changed for free during Change of Mind, from 5 May to 1 July. You can reorder the list, drop things and add most things. What you cannot do is add back a restricted course you never listed.
So the cheap move is to put anything you might conceivably want on the list now, including the ambitious one and the restricted one, and sort out the order in May when you know more. It costs nothing and it keeps the doors open.
And on the time
It is 5pm, not midnight. The CAO's own dates document sets out every closing time for the cycle, and they are afternoon deadlines rather than end of day ones.
Set a reminder for 4pm on 1 February. The site is slow on closing day, and it is slowest in the last hour.
Every date for the cycle is on the key dates page.