Disclaimer

Independent educational information site. This site is not CAO, is not affiliated with or endorsed by CAO or any university, and is not an official portal. It cannot retrieve private application records. Actual status records are only on the official CAO portal at cao.ac.za.

Information on this site is general educational guidance, not a guarantee of admission, funding, a fee, or a deadline. Programme requirements, fees and closing dates change by cycle and by programme. Always verify the current position on cao.ac.za and in the current CAO Handbook before you pay, submit, or rely on a date.

Fees warning: Fee figures are not harmonised across the source articles. Some state 2027 fees citing the CAO 2027 Entry FAQs, others omit all fees. A fresh cao.ac.za fee-structure check is required before any live publish.

Medicine closing-date warning: Third-party sources conflict on the UKZN Medicine (MBChB) closing date (30 June vs 31 July 2026). This site does not assert either date; check the Handbook for the programme.

An Independent Guide, Not CAO

This site is an independent educational information guide. It is not CAO, it is not affiliated with or endorsed by CAO or any university, and it is not an official portal. The original logo on this site must not be confused with the official CAO logo, and nothing on this site should be presented or understood as official CAO material. Actual application records are only on the official CAO portal at cao.ac.za.

Information Only, Not Advice Or A Guarantee

Information on this site is general educational guidance, not personal advice about your application, and not a guarantee of admission, funding, a fee, a deadline, or any other outcome. Institutions decide admissions, and programme requirements, fees, and closing dates change by cycle and by programme. Read the guides as explanations of how the system works, not as a promise about what will happen in your case.

Status Explanations Only

The guides explain, in plain language, what official CAO status wording means and what to do next after seeing a status. They do not check a private record, and they cannot tell you the current status of your own application. The status checker and the applicant login are different tools: the status checker uses a CAO number, a South African ID number, or a passport number, with no password, while the separate applicant login uses a CAO number plus a password. If you need your own current status, use the official CAO portal only, and never enter passwords or ID numbers on this site.

Verify Before You Act

Always verify the current position on cao.ac.za and in the current CAO Handbook before you pay, submit, change a choice, or rely on a date. If this site and an official source disagree, the official source prevails. This applies in particular to fees, closing dates, programme requirements, and contact details, which are the items most likely to change between cycles.

Fees And Dates Need Special Care

Fee figures are not harmonised across the source articles on this site. Some articles state fee figures citing the CAO Entry FAQs, while others omit all fees. Do not rely on a fee figure from a single guide without checking the current fee structure on cao.ac.za first. Likewise, third-party sources conflict on some programme closing dates, including the UKZN Medicine (MBChB) closing date, where 30 June and 31 July 2026 have both been reported by third parties. This site does not assert either date for that programme; check the Handbook for the programme itself.

External Links And Other Sites

Links from this site to official sources are provided for convenience, so you can verify information at its source. The content of those other sites is their responsibility, and their own policies apply when you visit them. A link to an official site does not make this site official, affiliated, or endorsed, and it does not transfer any responsibility for a private application record to this site.

Programme And Institution Differences

Requirements, fees, and closing dates vary by institution and by programme, as well as by application cycle. A guide that explains the general CAO process does not replace the programme-specific requirements of the institution you are applying to. Before you choose programmes, pay, or submit, check both the current CAO Handbook and the requirements of the institution concerned, through cao.ac.za and the institution's own official information.

If This Site And An Official Source Disagree

If anything on this site disagrees with cao.ac.za, the current CAO Handbook, or an institution's official information, the official source prevails and this site should be treated as out of date on that point. Please report the disagreement through the Contact Us page, without sending any private details, so the guide can be corrected through the manual review workflow described on the Editorial Policy page.