Application Countdown

Some people check their Facebook or e-mail accounts every five minutes . . . admission offices check the Common Application website.  The hot gossip item until January: how many?  How many applications will we receive?  Thyra checks multiple times per day, worried that a) through a bizarre confluence of natural disasters, we will not receive enough applications to yield a class, and we will all have to figure out how to translate our hobbies of watching cooking shows and dressing up our dogs in Halloween costumes into viable careers, or b) that we will receive so many applications that we couldn't possibly read them holistically in three months, and it might simply be more prudent to abscond with the application fees and hide out in Tahiti.

What will actually happen is probably something between the two extremes, but November is not a time when admission counselors are particularly rational. 

Every year we put together an office betting pool for the total number of completed applications on January 2 (that would be the deadline, seniors, just in case you had other plans for winter break).  Last year we had 2,718 applications; my guess for this year is 2,999.  What do you think?