This might be true but my thinking is that those who were actually serious about the application would seek out forums and post about the program. The amount of people posting is probably less than 10% of the number of applicants (based on previous years). Thus it makes sense that those who thought their application was competitive would be confused as to why it would not make it past preliminary rounds. After reading about 20 publications and such, I probably wasn't as competitive as I thought in that category though. Lol.