I agree, the numbers can be hard to figure out. I guess what makes things difficult is that we really don't know how many people that previously got letters to start in spring 2010 needed to defer or didn't pass the hesi or changed their mind and didn't want to start the program at all.
The way I look at it is like this:
I was number 73 in January, which was when they also sent out letters of intent for us to return. Out of the 72 before me at that time, 39 people either didn't return their letter or started a program elsewhere, making me number 33 for the Fall 2010 lottery. Now who knows how many people out of the 32 before me now are actually going to start next semester? It seems like its half and half....half of the people on the waiting list decide to start and half don't.
When they accepted 90 into the program a couple of semesters back, my anticipated start date was spring 2010, so I would have waited 1.5 years after applying. With the 60 they accept now, it pushed me back one semester to fall 2010 and increased my wait to 2 years total. So I would think that you can estimate between 1.5-2 year wait before starting.
Let me know if you have any more questions or if what I explained doesn't make sense because I needed to keep reading it to make sure it made some sort of sense, but these lottery numbers are tricky!
