hey that's totally normal, please don't beat yourself up about it. i'm in the same boat if it can be of any comfort (only rejections for now, 2 hard from UW and UM and 1 soft from Vandy) and trying to stay positive about it. there are really hundreds of people applying for only 3-10 spots so the odds are really tough, and for this reason, your results absolutely do not reflect the quality of your writing. maybe your sample just didn't resonate with the adcoms, and there could be so many reasons for this. a way i like to think of it is imagining if i were part of an adcom. if i had to choose between two samples, both extraordinary, one absurdist and one more realist, i would advocate for the realist one, simply because it is more in line with my taste. that doesn't mean the absurdist text is worse than the realist. this is probably not how adcoms work, but it's a good exercise for my brain to keep me sane and not give up on my dream just yet.