Yes, this happened to me. I was waitlisted, rejected, and then accepted the next go-around. I revamped my SoP and writing sample a ton. In my case, I found out later that the biggest reason they didn't take me was that my POI had just failed to get tenure and was in the process of leaving, so they had no one working in my specialty. By the next year they had hired a new British Modernist, so they had somewhere to put me. So keep in mind that sometimes the rejection has very little to do with your qualifications and a lot to do with departmental issues we don't see. That being said, do work on your SoP and writing sample, because being a more competitive applicant can never hurt.