Does it make a difference if you submit early vs submit late? Here’s some empirical data.
About ~1,000 students at IIT Madras took 3 online quizzes (GA1, GA2, GA3) in the last few weeks. The deadlines were all at midnight (India) on different days. Here’s when they submitted their final answers:
- There was a spurt of submissions at the last minute.
~1 out of 8 students submit with < 10 minutes remaining. - Most students submitted ~4 hours before the deadline.
In fact, 3 out of 4 students submit on the same day as the deadline. - A fair number of students submitted the previous day/night.
1 out of 6 are diligent and submit a day early.
But does submitting late help, since you get more time? Apparently not.
On average, every time the deadline is halved, the score drops by 1.4%.
For example, on average:
- Submitting 1 minute before scores 1.4% less than submitting 2 minutes before
- Submitting 2 minutes before scores 1.4% less than submitting 4 minutes before
- Submitting 4 minutes before scores 1.4% less than submitting 8 minutes before
- … etc.
This means that submitting early morning instead of midnight could give you a 15% advantage.
Of course, this might be confusing cause and effect. Maybe students who do well submit early, and those who struggle submit late.
But is there a merit in faking it till you make it? Perhaps by pretending your deadline is a day early, to get the best of both worlds? Something to think about…