As of spring 2016, there were 1695 College Program mids in NROTC nation-wide. I do not have the numbers broken down by option/year readily available. However, it wouldn't be a very good indicator for you to look at, because schools such as Texas A&M, VT, Citadel, VMI, etc., skew the numbers because they operate differently than a traditional NROTC school; they enroll a significant number of students as 4/C and 3/C who never intend to pick up scholarships and stay in the programs.
The better statistic to look at is the number of students who applied for 2-year/3-year scholarship the last couple years, as that is the competitive pool you should be concerned with:
July 2015:
3-year: 303 nominations, 66 selects
2-year: 199 nominations, 29 selects
July 2016:
3-year: 304 nominations, 60 selects
2-year: 200 nominations, 19 selects
As you can see, the number of nominations the past two years has been consistent. Starting with the current freshman class, fewer scholarships were awarded, meaning that either the total population of mids will have gone down from spring 2016, or units will have enrolled more College Program students to offset the loss of some scholarship freshmen. The College Program data is still being crunched for fall 2016 right now, so it's not available to analyze. Even if more College Program students enrolled this year than the past, I DOUBT it will be by a significant number. Therefore, I'd expect the number of nominations to look pretty similar to the previous two years.
So, with the number of Side Loads expected to rise, it's reasonable to expect, given a stable number of College Programmers, that earning one may become slightly easier than it has been for the past couple years (which have been pretty brutal, especially for the 2-years).
