One thing has to be done by every ordinary applicant by 1 February at 5pm: the CAO application has to be registered and paid for. An ordinary applicant choosing ordinary courses can leave both preference lists empty then and fill them during the free Change of Mind facility.
Course choices matter at that date only in particular cases. The important one is a course the CAO handbook explicitly marks “Restricted, see page 3”. Mature applicants also have separate early requirements, and anyone taking HPAT should treat 1 February as essential for the separate HPAT process.
Why restricted choices bite
Do not infer that a course is restricted merely because it has an interview, audition, portfolio or test. Some are restricted and some are not; the handbook label is what decides it. For a restricted course you have to have applied to CAO by 1 February at 5pm, and the course must either be on your list then or be added for €10 through the amendment facility, which opens on 5 February at noon and closes on 1 March at 5pm.
Undergraduate Medicine is not a restricted course. The handbook marks it “HPAT Required”, not “Restricted”. The date still matters because CAO advises Medicine applicants to register by 1 February and HPAT has its own registration and test timetable, but that is a separate rule from the restricted-course list.
Late application, which runs from 5 March to 1 May, gets you into the system. It does not normally get you a restricted course, and neither does the free Change of Mind in May. The handbook names one narrow exception: a restricted course "which shares the exact same assessment procedures with a course you had applied for by 1 February 2026 at 5pm" may be permitted on a Change of Mind, and it tells you to consult the institution before introducing one. Outside that, the way back in is the €10 amendment before 1 March, and only if you were already in by 1 February.
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 safe way to handle it
Register and pay by 1 February. If you may want a restricted course, put it on the list then; if you miss that choice, use the €10 amendment facility before 1 March. For ordinary courses, the list can still be filled in during Change of Mind.
Ordinary choices 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, including reordering restricted courses that were already on it. What you normally cannot do in May is introduce a restricted course you never listed: for that the deadline was 1 March, and the €10 amendment facility was the way.
So the safe move is to put every restricted option you might conceivably want on the list early, then sort the final order in May when you know more. Ordinary choices do not need to be invented before you are ready.
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.