Two in Five Entries Arrive in the Final 48 Hours. Here's the Data.

Introduction

We put off tax returns, birthday presents and dentist appointments. Applications are no different. Across 3,821 submissions in the last 10 calls to close on Dapple, only about a third of entries had arrived a week before the deadline. Two in five came in during the final 48 hours, and a quarter on the final day. If your entries look a little thin three weeks in, it's actually very normal.

This matters because the quiet middle of an open call is where organisers panic. They extend deadlines, pay for extra ads or assume the call has failed, usually before most applicants have even pressed submit. Below is what submission volume actually looks like in the run-up to a deadline, why it happens, and what to do about it.

When Do Applicants Actually Submit Before a Deadline?

Most applicants submit in the final few days. On a typical open call on Dapple, only about 15% of entries arrive in the first half of the time the call is open. A week before the deadline, about a third of entries are in. Two days before, there's still 40% to come. Then the curve goes almost vertical.

In the chart at the top of this post, each faint line is one call. The pattern held across grants, artist residencies, juried exhibitions, writing prizes and competitions, design calls and visual arts open calls, from Miami to Seoul. It held whether the call was open for four weeks or more than three months. A longer window didn't really spread entries out, it just made the quiet stretch longer. The final hours are busier than most organisers expect. One residency on Dapple received 64 applications in the last two hours before its deadline.

Why Do People Leave Applications to the Last Minute?

People leave applications to the last minute because a deadline far away feels less urgent than everything else on their plate. Psychologists call this temporal discounting and it's not a new phenomenon. A 2006 study of student assignments found submissions accelerate at an increasing rate as the deadline gets closer, the same shape as our chart.

It isn't only procrastination, though. We all know that applications are hard work, sometimes requiring multiple hoops to jump through. Applicants polish portfolios, rewrite statements and chase references right up to the wire. On calls where applicants work in drafts, the typical entry was started between one and six days before it was actually submitted. A quiet dashboard doesn't mean nobody's applying. It means they're still working.

The behaviour is so consistent that an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory used five years of telescope proposal data to describe it with a single "deadline flurry" formula. It's human nature, not a sign your call isn't landing.

Is the Last-Minute Rush the Same for Grants and Awards Elsewhere?

Yes. Every funder and awards body that has published its numbers tells the same story, and some see an even sharper spike than we do.

Do Deadline Extensions Get You More Entries?

A deadline extension adds a few late entries, but it mostly moves the rush rather than spreading it out. On calls run on Dapple, entries received after the original deadline made up about 2% of the total, though this is an unfair statistic as some organisers extended the whole call, others extended it only for a handful of applicants who had already started, and some kept to a hard stop.

One juried exhibition took 144 entries on its original deadline day. The day after, with the extension announced, it got 15. Then 48 more arrived on the new final day, a second, smaller spike. A design open call did the same: 152 entries on deadline day, then 26 across a 24-hour extension.

So extend if there's a real reason: a technical problem, a holiday clash, a big group of applicants asking for it. Don't extend because the numbers looked low a week out. They were always going to look low a week out.

What Should You Do If Your Entries Look Low Before the Deadline?

Don't panic, and don't judge the call until the final 48 hours. Use the curve to forecast instead. A simple rule of thumb from our data: multiply the entries you have a week out by three, or add about 70% to what you have two days out. That's roughly where you'll land.

Then put your effort where it moves the number:

1. Save your promotion for the final week. One reminder in the last seven days and another 48 hours out reaches people when they're actually ready to act. A post in week two mostly reaches people who'll forget.
2. Nudge the people who've started. Applicants with a draft in progress are your most likely entries. A friendly "you're nearly there" email converts far better than a cold ad. You should be able to see in your submission platform how many people have started but not finished their submission. How can you convert those dilly-dallyers?
3. Make the deadline impossible to misread. Give a date, a time and a time zone. Most of your entries will arrive in the last day, so ambiguity costs you.
4. Get ready for the spike. Make sure your platform, payment flow and inbox can handle a third of your entries in 24 hours, and that someone's around to answer questions on deadline day.

Frequently Asked Questions

About the Data

This analysis covers 3,821 submissions to the last 10 calls to close on Dapple. They span grants, artist residencies, juried exhibitions, writing prizes and competitions, a design open call and visual arts open calls, run by organisations in the UK, US, Asia and beyond. We measured when each submission arrived relative to the call's deadline and averaged the results so each call counts equally.

Sources

• NIH Extramural Nexus: A grant submission New Year's resolution
• Visegrad Fund: 251 submitted project applications
• SmartyGrants: SmartyStats on how applicants lodge forms
• Imperial College London: Grant application process
• Foundant community: Grant application timeframe
• Dezeen: Dezeen Awards 2019 deadline extended
• Stoehr, F. (2017), The Deadline Flurry Formula, ESO
• Howell et al. (2006), Academic procrastination

Run Your Next Open Call on Dapple

Dapple is submission management software for grants, awards, residencies and open calls. It handles the deadline-day spike so you can focus on the applicants. Find out more about Dapple or book a demo.