A growing body of literature has examined how applying for and winning competitive project grants affects the career trajectory of scientists in terms of productivity, quality, social networks, and knowledge. However, the role of grant schemes in shaping the direction of scientific inquiry remains poorly understood. In this study, we investigate how the research of grant recipients, rejected applicants, and a set of comparable non-applicants working in the same fields relates thematically to a set of funding calls issued by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. These calls are all of the ‘request for applications’ (RFA) type – i.e. targeting a specific type of research that the funder has identified and seeks to strengthen. We analyze the similarity between the topics embedded in applicants' research and the ones embedded in RFA calls. Applying a matching procedure followed by a difference-in-differences design, we find that applicants increase their topic similarity with the call more than non-applicants. However, we find no significant differences between the research of funded and rejected applicants – both groups shift their research in the direction of the call at a similar rate. These results cannot be explained by differences in post-call productivity. While we do not claim to have definitively disentangled the treatment from the selection effect on this issue, our findings have important implications for science policy and for our understanding of how the formulation of RFA calls shapes the direction of scientific inquiry.