This assessment can only be subjective, but I personally do not understand at all why people are so obsessed with submitting their application on the very first day.
Reason 1: I doubt that the "wave of applications" will be as large as people in this forum predict
- It is true that a lot of people become eligible over night
- But the reduction in applications and increase in processing time was not just based on the reduced eligibility in 2015 but also on the fact that citizenship judges have been removed from routine processing and that the application fee experienced a very steep increase
- Also, unlike people in this forum, the general immigrant doesn't think of citizenship applications every single day
Reason 2: Even if there is a significant wave, it won't come on the first day, it will surge steadily
- Yes, there will be an increase in applications, but there is no significant difference in applying on Oct 11 or, say Oct 20.
Reason 3: By pushing yourself to apply at the first chance, you risk incomplete applications, and that's what you should actually care about
- People are currently preparing the application by looking at the old forms and the old checklist
- That means you are basically begging for making a mistake
- There is a high risk that you won't follow some important change that happens between the old and the new forms
- Instead of the day of application, y'all should be way more concerned with the risk of submitting an incomplete or hard to handle application. Those are actual reasons for significant delays, much more than the question if you went to the post office at 8:00 am or 8:25 am.
Reason 4: It is just as likely that applying early will actually cause trouble at processing
- Everyone seems to think "If my application arrives on the 12th, I'm first in line"
- But it is in fact just as plausible, as you point out in your post, that the first applications will be handled not as efficiently as later applications because they have to get used to the new system first.
Again, this is a subjective assessment. I can not support all of the above claims with sources. Most of it is based on my intuition.