I can understand the three if the candidate submitted three SAs. However,the way I was reading Mammas post was that they are not separating them out I to SAs, but instead of having large interview groups they broke it down to smaller ones and a round robin type.
Our DS did interviews, and the group was about 6-9 people. He only requested USAFA, thus the members that had military background were all AF. The kids wanting all three would have done 3 interviews if selected for all 3. IOWs the kid that wanted WP went into a different room than those asking forUSNAor USAFA.
Our Senators did not talk,and basically if you were asked to interview you had @50%chance of getting the nomination. They had 18-20 kids that interviewed, and they only had 1 day of interviews. They whittled it down from ©400 to 20.
It would not shock me at all if the VA Senators if they only interview 45 candidates for each SA slate.or in the 5-7% range of the original pool.