If it helps at all, I don't think its necessarily a bad letter (saw your other post). I think after COVID, a lot of PhD students haven't graduated or been hired, and a lot are still working on their projects, therefore professors have less capacity to take on more students, even though they are highly qualified. It's all really a gamble. Because of the COVID effect and hiring issues too (a sad trend from the last decade or so), I've also noticed a lot more incoming graduate students have either a master's degree (or two!) or full-time research experience for a few years, plus often work experience in addition, before getting into some of the top-ranked programs. It's really created a lot of unfortunate downstream effects, and most programs haven't returned to their original size (and probably won't unfortunately ). All of this to say, it sucks that a lot of qualified students aren't getting their dream placements and are getting the same offers from pre-COVID, despite taking the time to improve their applications the last few years. I feel ya