The dangers of submitting at the last minute

You have 15 minutes before your 5:00 pm grant application deadline. Your weeks of late nights getting your application together is about to pay off.  You hover over your grants administrator's shoulder as they click the final button to submit and you both look on with bated breath for a confirmation message. Instead of the anticipated confirmation, you get... an error message! You wake up in a cold sweat. Whew! It was just a dream. You submitted your final grant application yesterday, a full week before the deadline. You're good!

Unfortunately, this nightmare or one like it sometimes ends up being a reality for PIs that wait till the last minute to submit grants. Now we know full well that oftentimes PIs do not get the sort of lead time they need to really take the time necessary. ORDE recommends that PIs take a 6 month time frame to develop their idea and project to submitting the grant. But we also recommend that your zero hour not be at the grant deadline. Here's why:

Error messages: As our nightmare scenario suggests, some submission systems will actually check for completion of your grant application and will not accept it until all errors are corrected. The NIH only considers an application if it is accepted as error free by grants.gov and then the NIH. If you get an error message, you must start the submission process over again with errors fixed.

Site overload: Unfortunately, most PIs wait till the eleventh hour to submit their proposal, and so the agency site is sometimes experiencing hundreds or even thousands of submissions at a time.  This means that processing can slow down or even that sites can crash. Sure, if the agency site crashes, they may make exceptions, but do you really want to be at the mercy of that call when you and your team have done so much work to get that application together?

Missing pieces: Over half of applications are not reviewed because they do not follow directions or the project they're proposing is not appropriate for the agency. Obviously, you don't want to be in that pool, but when Program Announcements and RFPs have pages and pages of directions, it's easy to miss something when you're scrambling to complete your final application right at deadline.



Processing: As described above, the PI is not the person who hits the final submission button. There is a whole team of people working with you on your grant to get it submission-ready. You need to work with your grants administrator and the Office of Grants & Contracts to submit an application. Waiting until the last minute can put your whole team in a tight spot.

Anticipating the unanticipated: One thing all of these reasons have in common is they're often not anticipated by the PI. Sure, your application would have been on time if this or that hadn't happened, but of course in today's competitive climate, it's becoming rarer for agencies to make exceptions to missed deadlines. So, save yourself the heartache and stress... submit early!


Resources:
ORDE timeline
What you need to know about receipt and referral - NIH Video