I guess it depends on whether you are going to animate a model or not, but when working in polygons you should try to stick with 4-sided polygons. 5-sided polygons can make the topology of the model messy if you are going to smooth the character. If you have to, make the 5-sided polygon into two triangles.

There are many good modeling tutorials online too.
Nice work.

I'll try to answer the question I think you are asking.

In Maya go to the menu titled Display>Heads Up Display>Poly Count
Now, when everything is visible in your scene, the Triangle Count in the left column is what you want to look at (it is the total # of triangles in the scene). Keeping the model to under 3,000 triangles may be quite difficult, but I believe you can submit a smooth model if you would like. Good luck.