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No matter what people tell you, it really doesn't work like this unfortunately for the following reasons:

1. It varies from firm to firm depending on eligibility of the schemes - the more open the scheme is to different groups of people, the more competitive in terms of application numbers it can be.
2. Dates of schemes can make a scheme more or less competitive - all it needs to do is full outside of term time or clash with competitors scheme dates and a scheme maybe less competitive. I moved a scheme forward by one week and compared to the previous year we had less than half the number of applications because a number of universities term date had not concluded.
3. Sometimes its just down to the advertising a firm does for that scheme. If they have more campus events or social media campaigns ahead of a scheme closing or get some really great PR near a deadline, application numbers can shoot up.
4. Competitive is not just about application numbers but quality. Sometimes you will just be up against a stronger or weaker bunch of candidates and that can influence how your application is perceived if you are a more borderline candidate.