Longtime lurker, current jdmba 11 applicant still waiting to hear back
Spoke to my friend, a current Kellogg student, volunteers at admissions: the way it works is that the admissions counselor is given a list of names to call each day in no particular order. It's all random. Also, last year they were calling until January 10. So while I feel like I am being tortured like the rest of you, it is better than last year at least.
So at the end of the day, we can conclude that the dings come in the morning email, and that everything else is random. Maybe that alleviates some stress for some of you. Any other extrapolations of a small sample size of data I wouldn't rely on.