The graduate streams are not NOC specific. Graduate from whatever province your university is in, you qualify for the graduate stream PNP, live in that province till you get your citizenship and then move. Don't like Ontario? Tough shit. It'll still be better than the country you're trying to immigrate from. Tough it out for a few years. Simple.
By the way, I don't really understand why FSW are believed to be the only ones with such high points.
I really don't understand why there is such a prevailing belief that only FSW can get high scores.
Because until they had combined draws, scores have historically gone up only. All the way from 2018 when 440 was considered a good score. When they restarted CEC draws, even after the megadraw that pulled out every CEC candidate, wen they resumed draws, the scores only went up to 460s, and went back down immediately. When they temporarily resumed FSW on the other hand, the scores went back up to high 470s or 480s.
It's not that only FSWs
can get high scores, it's that on average it's FSW that
do get high scores because they are more competitive. The average CEC (not you) spends more time content with their 400 score hoping for the system to help them out (which it usually does, and will continue to do so).
We are currently pushing our score over 500 and we are older than a typical candidate.
Good for you. I'm assuming you're CEC, and I can tell you that you're far ahead of the average CEC candidate. You are not the average CEC with your desire to push your scores. You may be older than the typical CEC candidate, but to be more precise you're better, just because you're trying to push your scores. I understand your desire to defend CECs becasue a lot of what I say sounds like a personal attack against you. It's not.
but it does make me wonder how many points you guys get for work experience if can offset all the extra points CEC people get for being CEC.
This alone tells me you're new to the immigration process. Go try out scenarios on their score calculators. I don't remember the exact scores anymore, but bachelors + 1year of exp for CEC is a higher score than a master's + 3 years of exp for FSW, assuming language age etc is kept the same. So if everything is done perfectly, a CEC can get a higher score FOUR YEARS sooner than an FSW. By definition it is easier for a CEC to compete in the same pool
but they just choose not to.
Edit: Calculated scores for you.
CEC bachelor's + 1 year Canadian exp: 474
CEC bachelor's + 2 years: 499
CEC bachelor's + 3 years: 510
CEC master's + 1 yr: 501
(you get the point,
every additional year of work exp gives extra points for CEC. This is NOT true for FSW)
FSW bachelor's + 1 year (foreign) work exp: 416
FSW bachelor's + 3 years (foreign) work exp: 441 <-
No extra points for 2 years, only for 3.
FSW master's + 1 year: 456
FSW master's + 3 years: 481
It is very very clear that it is
significantly harder to get equivalent scores as an FSW compared to CEC, yet scores are much lower when draws become CEC specific.
This assumes IELTS is maxed out. What this tells us is that CECs have on average much worse english, because a bachelor's and 1 year should give you a 474 just like that. But as we've seen that's not the average CEC score. The
vast majority are below 450.