Applications are accepted when the staff team think there is enough I believe, other than that you should be patient and wait a couple days considering everyone needs time to apply for helper and if the staff team just closed them right away they might miss out on a good helper.
I quite enjoy the 1.9 update, it has tons of new features, but on the other hand the pvp overall just stinks, but it's just a downgrade, everyone gets the same setting as usual, and all is fair.