Not that I'm even in the competition, but I think 3000 polys is a bit low for, even for low-poly standards. The new XBox360 is going to have vehicles and characters going as high as 40,000 polys apparently and if modellers for these games are going to compete, they wont go very far in the buisiness making 3000 poly models for games.

I'm not saying it's an invalid idea for a contest, I just think it's not going to practice up the contestants if they plan to take the career further.