I remember reading somewhere that Cathay's cadet scheme - one that was fully international - still only attracted around 10,000 applicants a year or something, and that was fully funded! The £90-95k price tag of this scheme is probably enough to put those people off who are not all that interested in flying. There will still have been a large pent-up demand of people who have wanted to go into training since 2007 but could not as unsecured lending dried up and it takes a long time to save up that sort of cash!! My guess would be around 2,000 applicants.
It would be interesting to see the spread of applicants by school. I read that the FTO phase of selection would start in October so I would imagine successful applicants at the first hurdle would not hear anything until towards the end of September. You'll hear about it here first no doubt.....