When do most students finish and send in their college applications?

Some people complete and submit their applications within days of it becoming available.

Some people click "submit" at 11:59 pm the night of the deadline.

Most people fall somewhere in between.

The best time to submit your application is when you're certain that it's as strong as it can be. That might mean waiting a bit... for your essays to be proof-read and revised; for a chance to retake the SAT; for an honor or award you anticipate; for first semester grades that will raise your GPA. If your application is already as good as it's going to get, then there's no reason to wait.

Something to keep in mind: if you're applying to schools that have rolling admission, submitting your application early can definitely increase your chances. With rolling admissions, they will review your application as soon as they receive it, and give you a decision as soon as they make one. It's pretty much first come, first served, so the early bird really does catch the worm. However, for schools with concrete deadlines (regular decision, early action and early decision), it doesn't matter when you apply, as long as you meet the deadline. They won't even look at the applications until the deadline has passed and all applications are in. And they don't look at the applications in the order they were received; they organize them according to their own system. So it won't matter whether you applied the first day you could, or the last day; your chances will be the same either way.

Assuming you are not planning on submitting any Early Action applications, you should aim for having everything done by Thanksgiving.

The point is that you need to know the deadlines for each school to which you intend to apply and whether or not you want to go for an Early Action deadline. Do not wait until the deadline to apply. Make sure you have ordered your test scores to be sent in as well as requested your letters of recommendation and transcripts. It often takes two weeks to have all this processed. If you wait to late, your material might not arrive until after the deadline.

Usually students apply to college November through January to attend the following fall.

In the fall of the year before they hope to enroll.

If you hope to enroll in the fall of 2017, you complete your application in the fall of 2016, sometime before the deadline, which for regular admissions, will usually be some point in December of 2016 or January of 2017.

In other words, there is no date by which "most" students do this. Some might send in their applications by the end of October and others by the beginning of December or, if the deadline isn't until late January, by the middle of January.

Again, this is for regular admissions. For early decision/early action, the deadlines will obviously be earlier.